Confirmed with Link: All-Purpose "Days of Our Meruelo" Talk

LAIslanderFan

Registered User
Nov 18, 2010
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Los Angeles, CA & Surprise, AZ
Here's my fantasy and some of it is really far fetched:
- AM purchases the land on June 27th
- On draft day June 28th, it's announced that the NHL and AM had a a stipulation in place to purchase the expansion team if AM won the auction to begin play in the 2027 season.
- the NHL makes the AZ team a lottery team in the 2025 draft so they can start compiling young players (the odds of drafting an 18 year old that's ready for the NHL are almost nil), 2 years prior to the NHL team taking the ice.
- the AZ team will get the first overall pick in the 2026 draft and 2027 draft
- this is really out of the box, put in place an AHL team for the 2026 season (a year before the NHL season hits the ice for the AZ team) I'm not sure how you do this, if a player needs to be called up. It would just be nice to have a team to cheer for that's going to be affiliated with the NHL club and might have future players on the roster. Someone else work on how this will work and don't criticize me. I started this stating in was a fantasy.
 

Mosby

Registered User
Feb 16, 2012
24,202
19,930
It's always funny how they say stuff when saying nothing would be better than some stupid non-statement. I swear at least the Ice Edge guys were half decent at PR, AM and his crew SUUUUCk at this stuff.

JOHN CHAYKA IS A LIAR AND A THIEF
 
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Shwan

Registered User
Jan 30, 2019
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Orange Country Adjacent
Yeah, but if he wasn’t such an asshat…

Absolutely. No argument here.

Just saying it's very surreal (and sucks) that we're now at a point everyone sees what a few of us saw 3 years ago, but it's because of a situation that really wasn't exactly his fault per se.

and I'll be honest right, if Meruelo came out and said he f***ed up and is working to fix it then I would kinda give him a bone here. If, the carrot on the end of the stick is a new franchise, debt free, then that would on paper alter his approach to everything.

It's not a distressed asset he's trying to mangle into some scheme, this is petty simple now: Build Arena, pay for team, get new team. You really don't have to try to find subtext on all his moves now.

(Edit) and I'll add: If he doesn't want to do it, then cool he can F off. But the League should have the keys to the Yotes if these rumors are true, so it's a matter of if someone else would like a clean start to Arizona Hockey. Remember the biggest deterrent to this team finding an actual owner was basically the insurmountable level of debt attached to it. If you could go to some billionaire and say "Build an Arena and you get the name on a fresh team" that very well might bring in some bites. Well s sounds like Alex keeps the rights and stuff for a team there goes my edit.
 
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LAIslanderFan

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Nov 18, 2010
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Los Angeles, CA & Surprise, AZ
Janet Yellen or Jerome Powell have just as much blame as Alex Meruelo for what's gone on in the last 72 hours :laugh:
The timeline seems to indicate it all came about when the auction date was announced.
My SPECULATION is that the NHL knew at some point earlier in the season (around the All Star game?) they were going to force a sale at the end of the regular season. I don't think they thought AM would go through with finding an alternative site any time soon and it would be reasonable to ask AM to sell (because of continuing to play in Mulett). When the auction date was set, it accelerated everything. If the NHL was going to force a sale at the end of the season, they couldn't let AM go through with the auction if he didn't have a team. It appears AM might still want a team and the NHL offered him a chance to purchase an expansion team to keep him happy. I still don't believe AM knew about this and XG was being sincere when he came out and said they were going to the auction and plan B was relocation.

Think about it, if AM knew about all of this, he wouldn't have sent XG out to promote it so much and in such a big way on the air. They just would have kept silent and let the cards fall when the season ended.
I honestly think AM was blindsided or the NHL brought it up to him and he thought he had wiggle room and he could overrule it.
 

The Lighthouse

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Aug 1, 2011
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Being a huge fan of hockey, I took an immediate liking to the Coyotes, because I was aware of their precarious situation in AZ. It was really important they made a success here. Being an Islanders fan, I recognized a lot of the issues they were dealing with. It was deja vu for me.

Thanks for your Isles/Yotes perspective! This is exactly the thing. So many of the issues are familiar to us. Attendance mocking. Feeling torn over broke/sometimes hostile ownership. Pinning hopes on referendums, proposals. The odd exciting playoff run. Wanted things in AZ to turn around for the team and I hope that if/when a team returns, and I think there's a feeling out there it's more "when" than "if," it's with committed ownership and the team can hit the ground running and hopefully not need that long term rebuild.
 

Shwan

Registered User
Jan 30, 2019
385
785
Orange Country Adjacent
The timeline seems to indicate it all came about when the auction date was announced.
My SPECULATION is that the NHL knew at some point earlier in the season (around the All Star game?) they were going to force a sale at the end of the regular season. I don't think they thought AM would go through with finding an alternative site any time soon and it would be reasonable to ask AM to sell (because of continuing to play in Mulett). When the auction date was set, it accelerated everything. If the NHL was going to force a sale at the end of the season, they couldn't let AM go through with the auction if he didn't have a team. It appears AM might still want a team and the NHL offered him a chance to purchase an expansion team to keep him happy. I still don't believe AM knew about this and XG was being sincere when he came out and said they were going to the auction and plan B was relocation.

Think about it, if AM knew about all of this, he wouldn't have sent XG out to promote it so much and in such a big way on the air. They just would have kept silent and let the cards fall when the season ended.
I honestly think AM was blindsided or the NHL brought it up to him and he thought he had wiggle room and he could overrule it.

I said it on BoH but it's not a coincidence this all came crashing down hours after the US Consumer Price Index came out.

The league is sitting on a mountain of debt in the Yotes name and it appears they finally decided that keeping it is no longer a tenable position.

Regardless of his intentions why, the rumors and statement releases clearly show Alex is not exactly willingly complying with what's going down.

So I'm guessing that the idea of "You get one last shot but If you screw up we're giving the team to Smith" has been the long standing plan but given the rapidly devolving economic and political environment, the league went back on their deal last week.
 
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Llewzaher

Registered User
Aug 2, 2005
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North America
This is incredible...

Just when you thought the guy couldn't care less..
Someone pointed this out and I had to check it myself……

View attachment 851249
that’s funny.. I sent out my first resumes without putting it in PDF( it’s been a while since I had to do one )

I think you need at least 1000 words to accurately detect if it is AI generated .

But nothing would surprise me
 

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