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God willing, tonight is the last time we'll ever see our team play the Phoenix Coyotes. I know we've thought this for four years now, but it seems like something is different this time. The NHL had always been really good about keeping everyone on message and talking about how great the Coyotes are and how they're just about to be sold, but so far we've had Pat Foley ranting on the air about how this is getting ridiculous, a tweet from Bettman's buttmonkey Darren Dreger saying Quebec City was a frontrunner for relocation with no local sale on the horizon, and then loudmouthed Wild owner Craig Leipold telling some sports-marketing seminar at Marquette that the Coyotes are probably going to move. There are two groups of venture capitalists kicking the tires, but this feels like the surge of "interested parties" that circled around the Thrashers days before they went to Winnipeg.
This whole thing has been corporate welfare at its worst. Every scheme to buy this team has been based on some sort of subsidy. When Jerry Reinsdorf tried to buy the team, it was to be with tax increases funneled to him. Chicago banker Matt Hulsizer tried to buy the team by having Glendale buy the arena's parking lots back from him, except they owned the parking lots all along and couldn't give them to him so as to buy them back, because that's illegal. Greg Jamison, Sharks owner, required a $320 million "arena management fee" to buy the team, but even being given more tax dollars than it would take to buy the team ($170 million), he couldn't find enough investors to close the deal. All these people should consider going to hell when they die. I mean, if these are the shady business deals they couldn't get away with, imagine all the smaller ones they had closed.
As awful as this has been for the competitive integrity of the league, what with the team suddenly turning into a model organization when it became the league's job to save them, it is a pretty raw deal for the few thousand fans of this team. If Bettman really cared about selling the team and keeping it in Phoenix, he easily could have sold the team for assumption of debt and taken the loss, but they've tried to have it both ways with this: they get to decide where their teams are, AND they get to make money on it. As a result, the fans have been jerked around for years now, thinking every tax-sucking scumbag is their personal savior and, when that is not true, that every season will be their last.
So could NHL hockey work in Phoenix? At this point, I'd say no. The market has shown that they won't drive to Glendale. The local economy got its ass kicked when the world reminded Phoenix that they provided no goods or services other than real estate speculation. And though the team has been there for 17 years, they just haven't made the inroads that they needed to make. Perhaps it was doomed from the start with the way the team arrived: the Jets were supposed to have moved to Minneapolis but for a failure to agree on a lease for the Target Center, so they were hustled down to Phoenix at the last minute and stuffed into an arena that couldn't fit a hockey rink. Maybe if it had been an expansion team and they had put down roots the right way, they could have had a decent niche like that of the other warm-weather retirement colony team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, but the NHL never gave a shit about the health of the Phoenix market until it was too late and they had one foot out the door for Hamilton. Suddenly, when it became a matter of protecting the Maple Leafs from competition, Phoenix was important. But no, you're never going to get the revenue you need out of Phoenix. It won't work. Time to go.
Floppy bitch Mike Smith is day-to-day with a lower body injury and the rumor is that he pretty much quit on the team. He could be back, though. Or it could be Jason LaBarbera. Or it could be their AHL goalie, Chad Johnson. Whoever it is, he'll be behind a bunch of shot-blockers. Unlike the mathematically eliminated Predators, the Coyotes can still run the table and finish eighth, though it's not likely. Eighthwatch '13:
Detroit: 38.7%
Columbus: 22.8%
Dallas: 22.6%
Minnesota: 10.9%
Phoenix: 2.6%
St. Louis, SJ, LA, Vancouver all <1%
Detroit is still the favorite, and they can really jump ahead with a win against the Canucks tonight, but still very much in the air. I kinda fear Bobrovsky. I fear nothing about the Stars.
Sharp is still out and God only knows when he'll be back.
Hawks are 34-5-4, adjusted 28-5-10, about three points above expectation
Yotes are 18-17-8, adjusted 15-20-8, almost four points below expectation
Hawks are 2nd in scoring at 3.209 and 1st in goals allowed at 2.023. Hey, I warned you about <2 being unsustainable.
Coyotes are 20th in scoring at 2.512 and 16th in goals allowed at 2.581.
This team sucks. Raffi Torres went off to San Jose, but keep an eye out for goonery from Good Guy Shane Doan!
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
Last edited by Curious Hair on Sat Apr 20, 2013 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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