Dundon’s option to sell Hurricanes isn’t news. But it is worth keeping an eye on.
One of the persistently frustrating things about the hockey world paying little attention to the Carolina Hurricanes is the hubbub when old news gets repackaged as new news by talking heads who should know better.
A prominent national hockey analyst who shall remain nameless made a splash on social media Wednesday when, during a radio interview in Canada, he revealed that Tom Dundon has an option to throw the Hurricanes back to Peter Karmanos in January.
Readers of this newspaper will already have read about that in some detail. Almost three years ago. In 2018.
Additionally, we landed on the moon. (No way! That’s great!)
But it has been known — around here, anyway — that Dundon demanded a put option in the deal that allows him to sell his majority share of the team back to Karmanos after three years for an unknown but specified price. Which, given Karmanos’ financial status, would likely put the team back on the NHL dole awaiting a sale.
Dundon said at the end of the 2017-18 season the option had turned out to be “unnecessary” but the coronavirus is the wild card here: Only Dundon knows how much that alters the equation.
“Obviously it changes the economics,” Dundon said Thursday, “but it really doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to own the team and all that. I don’t think anything is going to change. I don’t have any intention of not owning the team.”
In Dundon’s world, the option was a standard safety valve in any acquisition, even if it’s uncommon in pro sports franchise sales. It was there in case he hated owning a pro sports team (he doesn’t) or there were issues with the arena (one of the last hurdles in front of the new lease extension was cleared Thursday when the arena authority approved its new funding agreement with Raleigh and Wake County) or there was something completely unexpected and unprecedented … like a global pandemic that throws the NHL’s business model out the window.
Which may explain why Dundon isn’t quite speaking in absolutes.
Dundon has been deeply invested in the emotional swings and technical details of owning and running a hockey team — for better or for worse — but if he decides the economics don’t work he does have an escape hatch coming open in the next few months.
So perhaps it was merely coincidence, perhaps it was an olive branch, perhaps it was something else when Dundon invited Karmanos to join the brain trust in the locker room for the first round of the draft earlier this month. Notably, they put him somewhere he wouldn’t show up on the television feed.
Karmanos hasn’t been around much if at all since he sold the team to Dundon — not that he was ever around that much when he owned the team — but he’s still a minority partner. He’s not out of the picture. Not yet, anyway: Dundon has another option to buy Karmanos out entirely.
Given the amount of time, effort and emotion Dundon has put into running the team, he has every reason to stick it out. He’s also not speaking in absolutes, either. Nor, probably, would that be prudent, given the circumstances. A lot could change about the NHL as we know it over the next few months.
But nothing has changed with Dundon’s option. It was there in 2018 and it’s still hanging out there now.
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 1:41 PM.
