I think that the NHL owners as a collective have no problem with the Flames moving to a new city if the City of Calgary does not offer the type of deal that the owners desire.
Its business and I think the owners dont want to give in to a city and then have others cities trying to negotiate better terms for new arena deals. Moving the Flames shows hat the NHL is prepared to play hardball. There are enough cities that will throw money at a team in terms of lucrative arena deals that moving one team may be enough to create fear among other cities needing new rinks to throw money at teams they want to keep.
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