With Prospects Waning, Coyotes’ Fate Could Be Decided While Still in Playoffs at BetLM

With Prospects Waning, Coyotes’ Fate Could Be Decided While Still in Playoffs

As much as we admire every NHL fan base – espe­cially one as resilient as the group that sticks by the Phoenix Coy­otes – it’s get­ting tougher and tougher to believe that the league can fit this square peg in a round hole. Wednes­day was another ugly day in the pro­ceed­ings, as Nick Kypreos reported that the Coy­otes would relo­cate to Win­nipeg once their play­off drive con­cludes while league exec Bill Daly denied the rumors.

Thursday’s batch of news indi­cates that the league’s repeated mea­sures to delay an inevitable deci­sion might have run their course, forc­ing what some are call­ing “The Bettman ultimatum.”

On the bright­est side (even opti­mism has traces of harsh real­ity in this case), the Phoenix Busi­ness Jour­nal reports that there still remain some options to keep the Coy­otes from relo­cat­ing. Even if their front office staff told Gary Law­less that the team has a 50–50 chance of mov­ing to Win­nipeg, it’s not set in stone just yet.

There are two main options to pay off the 0 mil­lion in bonds that would help seal the 5 mil­lion deal with Matt Hul­sizer, the chief issue that is hold­ing up the sale.

• The NHL itself could buy some of the bonds to keep the Coy­otes in Phoenix.
• Con­versely, the City of Glen­dale could reach into its 0 mil­lion Enter­prise Fund to help buy up the bonds themselves.

Of course, with each option, it comes down to the sides actu­ally agree­ing to fork over a big chunk of cash.

Would the 29 NHL own­ers be will­ing to pay off some of the bonds for another team? It seems far-fetched if they are unwill­ing to pay Wayne Gret­zky the mil­lion he was sup­posed to receive as the Coy­otes’ fired head coach. (It’s tough to stom­ach sto­ries about the league stiff­ing the most impor­tant player in its his­tory a day after the NHL boasted its best busi­ness year ever with .9 bil­lion in pro­jected rev­enue, but whatever.)

The City of Glen­dale might be more likely to spend that money, although the city seems to have taken a few hits already, includ­ing cov­er­ing the mil­lion the league lost when it kept the team in Phoenix for another season.

I hate to ask this ques­tion, but is this all really worth it for a team that isn’t exactly sell­ing tick­ets like hot cakes? At what point will every­one real­ize that Phoenix just isn’t that into the Coy­otes? It never feels good to see fans lose their team, but real­ity must fac­tor into the equa­tion too.

Law­less dis­cusses the pos­si­bil­ity that Gary Bettman and the NHL will be forced to make a deci­sion in the very near future in this Win­nipeg Press col­umn. In fact, Law­less claims that the league might be forced to make the call by the end of the Coy­otes’ first round series or at least the Stan­ley Cup finals.

Bettman may report­edly use a trans­fer agree­ment with True North (the group look­ing to bring a team back to Win­nipeg) as lever­age, forc­ing Hul­sizer and the City of Glen­dale to match a deal in a short win­dow of time. Law­less points out that the Win­nipeg group wouldn’t be out in the cold if the Coy­otes do stay in Glendale/Phoenix, though, as the league would be forced to cough up a few mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for True North’s “role and efforts” in lever­ag­ing Hul­sizer and Glendale.

It’s impor­tant to note that most (if not all) of this infor­ma­tion is based on spec­u­la­tion and anony­mous sources, but the truth is unde­ni­able: the count­down is absolutely on. We’ll keep you up to date as the Coy­otes soap opera keeps spinning.

Related Posts:

• Five Fights That Could Still Com­pete for ‘Fight of the Year’
• Five Thoughts: How You Stop Wor­ry­ing About Shutouts and Love the Playoffs
• Coy­otes Focus on Hockey, Spec­u­la­tion Grows Over Poten­tial Win­nipeg Move
• Kings or Coy­otes Can Clinch, Ducks-Sharks Bat­tle in Anaheim
• NHL Bet­ting: Phoenix Tops Columbus

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