There is a Sliding doors scenario, where the NHL just leaves it Jim Balsillie buys the Arizona Coyotes and move them to Hamilton, Ontario, more than ten years ago. Would it have worked? Hard to know. Balsillie’s BlackBerry fueled not too long after its proposed purchase date and could have resulted in a host of problems north of the border, just like in Arizona. The Leafs certainly should have been pleased with a team moving just 68 miles away. And perhaps having the league’s smallest arena, as Copps Coliseum (now FirstOntario Center) was then, would have led to more complications.
Still, the NHL (at the time) would have had a deep-pocketed owner in an ardent hockey market. And none of it could have been worse than what the Arizona Coyotes are, currently are, and will continue to be.
In the last episode of As The Coyotes Burn The Athletic’s Katie Strang takes a deep dive into the latest buffoon-laden property group that the NHL promised they could save the ‘Yotes once and for all, but who have proven to be just another clown float in the constant parade of charlatans and pudwhacks who have acquired the franchise. This time it’s Alex Meruelo and the uber clods who got to him. You would think the NHL may have noticed that the NBA didn’t think he was capable of buying the Atlanta Hawks, thanks to out-of-alignment finances. But the NHL is always happy to pick up the trash from the NBA. After all, that’s how they got Gary Bettman.
It’s masterful work as always from Strang, but a lot of it is stuff you’ve probably read about someone else in the sport before. An owner who doesn’t have as much money as he told the league that accepted him as a buyer / owner, he did. Unbridled abuse of workers, justified for himself and his cronies by having a lot of money, but not as much as he wants the world to believe. Nickel and dim everyone in sight to give the impression of streamlining, but basically nothing in your pocket, including the greater resources to bide those people out for less money. Mind-boggling recruitments and internal organization. Workers of the last ownership group feel utterly helpless, and those who are gone have to go to court to get money they owe.
Oh, and to complete the set, because it wouldn’t be without it, the owner’s kid ruins everything in a department he doesn’t know about. You could probably write a lot of this out of your head, and you’ve certainly seen it all before. Any owner should be considered a Bob Nutting until they prove they aren’t.
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The whole piece is well worth it, if only to clearly illustrate how desperate the NHL has been to keep the Coyotes in Arizona, that they will hand over the keys to just about any bastard who raised his hand. Including jackasses who tried to intimidate Strang, one of the most accomplished hockey writers respected in every circle, unlike these nincompoops.
Alex Meruelo is the fourth owner of the Coyotes since the league took control of Balsillie’s team and anchored the team in the desert. It’s been clear for over a decade that the team won’t be working with their arena in Glendale, if it can work in the market at all, but no new arena plan ever emerged from the planning stage. It looked like a second one like the one in Tempe might emerge, but then Arizona State pulled out of their share of the deal. With the article detailing how Meruelo’s group has tried to smother various sellers of what they owe, it’s a laughable mystery how they’ll find the money to build a new arena in a more palatable area.
Meruelo has not been in charge for very long, but the article shows nothing about how he would pull the Yotes out of this spiral. They’ve been at the bottom of the league in attendance, earnings and rankings for so long that they’ve become the definition of ‘entrenched’. Meruelo also doesn’t come off as anything resembling a visionary.
At one point, the NHL has to admit that so much has been tinkered with the Coyotes that they are now irreparably broken. This is an organization that just in the past year had their GM jump ship fraud in such a way that the competition banned him for a year, wrote an unrepentant racist they had then to waive the rights to thanks to the backlash, and now let’s break this story. And this is all just normal for the course for an organization that has worked for years fight with the city itself it lies in their enormous losses.
The NHL gobbled up a potential move by allocating an expansion team to Seattle. And in a post-pandemic world, assuming we ever get into that world, moving a sports franchise can be next to impossible. Still, you would have to think that Quebec City would still be more than willing to fill its shiny arena with an NHL team every night. Portland and Kansas City still have their buildings. How can any of them be worse than this?
The Coyotes cannot be saved. The NHL and several idiots have spent nearly 15 years trying to prove it. When is it time to declare “victory” and move on?
Updating: The Coyotes have released a statement, and it’s about as balloon handed as you can imagine the organization portrayed in Strang’s article coming up with:
Again, to reiterate, Strang is one of the most respected writers in the business. As she said in the article, the Coyotes and the league got a chance to comment on everything, and they succeeded. Attacking Strang’s integrity afterwards is the epitome of amateur idiocy. It hits all the crazy buttons of “It ‘It’s all the previous man’s fault, ” Hey we are doing the community a favor here, ‘and’ DDon’t you know this man is already rich? “Just brilliant things.