Is a Sliding doors scenario, in which the NHL simply left Jim Balsillie buys coyotes from Arizona and move them to Hamilton, Ontario, more than a decade ago. Would it have worked? Hard to know. Balsillie’s BlackBerry was booked not long after the proposed date of purchase and could have led to a number of problems north of the border, as it was in Arizona. Certainly, the Leaves should have calmed down in connection with a team that was only 42 miles away. And perhaps having the smallest arena in the league, such as Copps Coliseum (now FirstOntario Center), would have led to more complications.
However, the NHL would have had an owner with deep pockets (at the time) on a hot hockey market. And none of this could have been worse than they were, are now and will continue to go Arizona coyotes.
In the latest version of “While burning coyotes”, Athletic’s Katie Strang makes a deep dive into the latest group of jester-laden owners who promised the NHL they could save “Yotes Once and For All,” but turned out to be yet another floating clown in the parade of charlatans and puddles. who acquired the franchise. This time, Alex Meruelo and uber-clods came with him. You’d think the NHL could have noticed that The NBA didn’t think he was capable to buy the Atlanta Hawks due to misaligned finances. But the NHL is always happy to pick up the NBA garbage. After all, that’s how they caught Gary Bettman.
It’s a masterpiece, as always, by Strang, but many of these are things you’ve probably read about someone in sports before. An owner who doesn’t have as much money as he told the league that accepted him as a buyer / owner did. Violent abuse of employees, justified for himself and his colleagues to have a lot of money, just as much as he wants the world to believe. Nickel and darkness all in sight to give the appearance of streamlining, but in fact having nothing in your pocket, including the larger means to wait for those people for less money. Amazing jobs and internal organization. Employees in the last group of owners feel completely helpless, and those who are no longer around must go to court to receive money.
Oh, and to complete the set, it would not be without it, baby owner fuck everything that happens in a department that knows nothing about. Many of these you could probably write from memory and you have certainly seen them all before. Every homeowner should be considered a Nutting Bob until they prove he is not.
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The whole play is definitely worth your time, if only to clearly illustrate how desperate the NHL was to keep Arizona coyotes from handing over the keys to any trickster who raises his hand. Including jackets who tried to intimidate Strang, one of the best performing hockey writers who is respected in every circle, unlike these nincompoops.
Alex Meruelo is the fourth owner of the Coyotes since the league took control of the Balsillie team and anchored the team in the desert. It was clear for a decade-plus that the team would not work with their Glendale arena if it could work at all on the market, but no new arena plans have ever come down from the planning stage. It looked like a second from Tempe, but then Arizona came out of their business. With the article detailing how the Meruelo group tried to stifle different vendors about what is owed to them, how they will find the money to build a new arena in a more pleasant area is a mystery.
Meruelo hasn’t been in charge for so long, but the article does nothing to show how to get Yotes out of this spiral. They have been at the bottom of the league in attendance, revenue and rankings for so long that they have become the very definition of “rooted”. Meruelo doesn’t come off as a visionary either.
At some point, the NHL has to admit that the coyotes have been touched so much that they are now broken by repairs. This is an organization that even in the last year has had the fraud of a GM jumping ship in such a way that the league banned her for a year, they developed an unrepentant racist that they had then to waive the rights to thanks to the side effect and now break this story. And this is only equal to the course of an organization that has spent years fighting with the city itself lies in their massive losses.
The NHL has conquered a possible relocation by providing an expansion team in Seattle. And in a post-pandemic world, assuming we ever get to that world, moving a sports franchise might be nearly impossible. However, you should think that Quebec City would be more than willing to fill its bright arena every night with an NHL team. Portland and Kansas City still have their buildings. How could one of them be worse than that?
Coyotes cannot be saved. The NHL and various dimwits have spent almost 15 years trying to prove this. When is the time to declare “victory” and move on?
Update: The Coyotes have released a statement and it is as big a hand as you could imagine that the organization described in Strang’s article would come with:
Again, to reiterate, Strang is one of the most respected writers in the field. As she stated in the article, the Coyotes and the league were given the chance to respond to everything it contained and they passed. Attacking Strang’s integrity after all is the culmination of amateur idiocy. It hits all the buttons “InotIt’s the previous guy’s fault, “” H.if we do the community a favor here ”and“ Ddon’t you know this guy is already rich? “It simply came to our notice then.