Ted Leonis Unhappy with Contraction Talk

Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis has taken issue with an article written by Ross McKeon suggesting that the Capitals should be one of six teams contracted.

From time to time, you have heard me rail against media pundits for their lack of criticality; original thinking; creativity; and basic non-understanding of what they are writing about.

Well here is another rant. This time against Ross McKeon and his blog post mentioning contraction of six NHL teams including the Washington Capitals. Read it here.

First, the throw away notion of shuttering six major league teams is just mean-spirited. Those six teams employ thousands and thousands of people and support tens of thousands of families. I guess Ross wants us to lay off all those people in the toughest economy ever. And those teams generate dollars for their cities in taxes and they generate dollars to hundreds and hundreds of small businesses as vendor/ suppliers. All of that would go away and the benefit and glow of a major sports team franchise would leave those cities marked as second rate for a long, long time.

I have to at least partially agree with Leonsis. Regardless of whether or not you agree with contraction, I don’t think Washington should be a team that goes. They have a fairly solid history in the nation’s capital and are on the upswing again.