Sports Column

Hawks may have savior in the wings

On Sports

By dwight jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Jul 6, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (11 Reader comments)

Brent Peterson, who coached the Portland Winter Hawks to a Memorial Cup championship in 1998 and once captained the team, is tired of watching his favorite junior hockey franchise struggle.

Now associate coach with the Nashville Predators, Peterson is constantly reminded of the on-ice and off-ice problems of the Hawks.

“I wake up every night thinking about it,” he says from his home in Nashville, Tenn. “I recently went to an NHL coaches meeting – guys I’ve played against and coached against for years, and they come up and say, ‘What happened to your team?’

“It’s gone from a model franchise to the joke of the Canadian Hockey League.”

Peterson decided awhile back to make an effort to do something about it. While he’s not leaving the Predators – he has a two-year contract in his pocket – he’s put together a formidable team of investors seeking to buy the team from Jim Goldsmith, Jack Donovan and John Bryant.

The group includes former Winter Hawks Brenden Morrow, Marian Hossa, Ray Ferraro and Scott Nichol (to name a few), along with PGA golfer and former Portland resident Peter Jacobsen, a longtime friend of Peterson.

Peterson has been cautious about coming forward with the list of investors because people have warned him that it could make the asking price go higher. But he says there is little reason to worry about that.

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