Completion of the Preds’ new lease deal with the city of Nashville has taken longer than many expected after an agreement was completed in principle last fall. If negotiations continue to lag, how tempted will the new ownership group be to stick with the original lease?

Hanging over negotiations is the possibility that the Predators could complete this season under the existing lease, fail to average 14,000 tickets a game and invoke an escape clause. The team’s last regular-season game would be on April 4.

“Without a new lease (and with the current low ticket sales), the Team can leave at the end of this year and pay the City approx $18 million … unless the Team is put in default, and we file an injunction that prohibits them from leaving,” Lawrence wrote in his memo.

Such a move, coming so soon after they bought the team with the promise that they would do everything possible to keep it in Nashville, could seriously damage the reputations of the mostly local owners.

I think this is the multi-million dollar question. My guess is that Freeman and company have little interest in exercising the escape clause, but I’m curious whether any of this becomes leverage behind the scenes if those completing the deal continue to be mired in the details. I sure hope not.

Mayor Dean and his administration are looking out for the city and for Preds fans. I applaud them for sticking to their guns about the lease terms negotiated late last year.

The lenders want to be able to assign the lease to new owners if the current owners fail financially and the lenders have to foreclose on the loan. Metro attorneys have resisted that request because they don’t want a third party to have that power, but they’ve made an alternate proposal to the lenders’ attorneys and are waiting for a response.

Allowing lenders this authority could put the Preds’ future here in serious jeopardy over the long haul. Who’s to say that “new owners” might not be Jim Balsillie or another prospective owner set on relocating the team?

Jeff Goldblum’s quirky scientist character in Jurassic Park is the source of one of my favorite quotes, which I’ll paraphrase: “You spent so much time thinking about whether you could, but you never stopped to think about whether you should. “Mangy Dog Productions, a local comic podcasting group, touched on the wisdom of purpose today at Podcamp Nashville. Podcasting (or blogging or, hell, anything) is a waste of time unless you have something specific to say. It’s just noise unless you can tell your audience why it matters.

I personally think McCain would be foolish not to pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate this fall. I felt that way prior to Tuesday, but the decision seems even clearer now. I won’t be voting on the Republican side of the ballot regardless, but Huckabee draws evangelicals and conservatives in the party base who are none too pleased to see a moderate as the frontrunner for the nomination. He also will draw plenty of votes in the South in the general election. As a bonus, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, he may even keep her from winning Arkansas (and Oklahoma and Missouri).

If the three likeliest choices to be America’s next president are Clinton, Obama and McCain, in my opinion we could do much worse. That statement would no doubt make many conservatives cringe, and I’m OK with that.

As usual, the Preds are responding generously in a time of need: This time it’s in support of the American Red Cross’ tornado relief efforts. The team will donate half of the revenue from tickets sold today and tomorrow for tomorrow’s home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. If you don’t have tickets, there’s no time like right now. If you do have tickets, volunteers will accept additional donations for the Red Cross at all entrances to the arena tomorrow night.

Former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, now working out of an office at Tennessee State University’s Avon Williams downtown campus, didn’t hear good news about the U.S. economy during his time at Harvard University last fall. I had the opportunity to hear Purcell’s account of that news earlier today.

According to Purcell, Harvard President Larry Summers expects that the economy will “bottom out” in October and that the forecast for the future looks a lot more like 1991 than 2001. The recession in 2001 was rough, but 1991 was worse. Summers told a group of new mayors, including Nashville’s Karl Dean, that it would be “two years before you can do anything significant” because of the forthcoming economic stagnation.

While in Massachusetts, Purcell also heard economic historian Niall Ferguson say that the economy looks like 1930, the beginning of the Great Depression, most of all. Unlike in prior lean economic times, though, Ferguson expects that the third world (especially China and the Middle East) will sustain the first world (rather than the other way around). Ferguson anticipates a “fire sale” of U.S. assets because of the dollar’s low value. It may not be a depression we’re headed toward, but it could be a bumpy road.