One counterpoint here…..
Most of these reporters tend to copycat off each other these days so when you hear “multiple sources” it can often end up being one or two sources multiplied.
It can in some cases, for sure. Especially among smaller sites and sites like Eklund and rumor mill sites. But not with Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan. They do a longform piece like this and it's either original reporting or corroborated reporting from other reputable sources.
The thing that bugs me about this whole debate - other than the whole "It Can't Happen Here" vibe of backlash about a "biased press" - is that it's dead simple for us as fans to discount pejorative reporting as "fake news" and hearsay and whatever else because our emotions won't allow us to concede even the possibility that it might be accurate. Hell, I'm guilty of it myself with the Frank Seravalli reporting. You all probably remember how I laid into that nasal-voiced tub of processed meat when all of this started going down at first...
and I used to be a credentialed reporter. I let my fan glasses get fogged up by denial and defensiveness and consequently I almost missed the most consequential story in Arizona's hockey history.
It's funny, because the other day I recall hearing someone say that Mat Ishbia is the Suns' owner because "Sarver got taken out by an ESPN hit piece." What nobody ever admits is that if the ESPN piece was
wrong, then Sarver would have and could have rebutted it and might even have had a case for a libel lawsuit. Nobody ever references the independent investigations that followed the ESPN piece that confirmed that not only were the details accurate, they were actually understated.
I get it, okay? Everyone's afraid that if Meruelo is even 1/4th as bad as he appears to be for AZ hockey that we will never get a team back here. That doesn't fill me with glee either. I hurt for the local hockey scene and especially the Kachina program, which has thrived and survived with Coyotes money behind it. That may all go away if Meruelo doesn't deliver.
But the other side to that is that this franchise was crippled -
crippled - by bad management and poor ownership for
decades. We were the laughingstock of the league at best for all but two or three seasons' worth of hockey. Is it worth going right back to that well, just to have an NHL team closer than five hours' drive away (less than an hour by airliner)? Do you want to wait five to ten years for an NHL franchise, only to have an ethically and morally questionable gaslighter and his inept offspring put a team together in the manner of monkeys f***ing a football?
I'm sorry, but I don't. I say this over and over, but pro hockey is a business. It is a consumer product. If I like candy bars, but the only one being sold at my local store is "Shit 'N' Nougat," I'm not going to buy it and eat it. I'm going to go to another store, or maybe buy some chips instead. I'm never going to be desperate enough for the alternative.