The NHL can afford to rebuild the stadium.
The get more than enough income from the TV-Networks who get their share from the advertisers during NHL games.
Maybe the NHL has to lower player-salary expectations. Maybe the NHL and team owners have to lower their “take-home” revenue expectations. Maybe the NHL has to bargain for more revenue from the TV networks.
However, in terms of borrowing on the open market to rebuild the stadium, the NHL DOES have the revenue stream to pay for bonds for that effort themselves.
Of course what crony-capitalist enterprise would not prefer to get the taxpayers to pay for it instead?? And to that end they extort the funds they need from the taxpayers with political threats to move a team.
Let them.
Not a single tax-payer sponsored sports stadium has produced the financial returns or revenue to the locality where it is sited in amounts that it was projected for it when the project was “sold” to the taxpayers.
What we need is an urban pact that quits paying the ransom on the threats to take a team away, until every sports stadium in service is 100% the result of the private enterprise of the profitable sports leagues.
Try reading the previous posts. The Islanders put a FULLY FUNDED PRIVATE APPROACH on the table and the local politicians rejected it. This was Plan B.
You're not very familiar with the NHL's finances.
This is not the NFL.