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CXLVII - Is this the 'Final Countdown' in Arizona?

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aqib said:
Other than the occasional Josh Harris who owns teams in multiple sports have experience in sports before buying a team? In the NFL you have Dave Tepper in Carolina and Jimmy Haslam in Cleveland who were minority owners of the Steelers before buying their own franchises outright and both of them suck.
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On the one hand, at one point they had to have had no experience as an owner before buying into a team, but you do have examples like Michael Andlauer with the Senators, John Sherman with the Royals, the Pegulas when they bought the Bills, Craig Leipold with the weird Preds-Wild thing, Jon Ledecky was a minority owner of the Capitals before buying the Islanders with Scott Malkin, David Bonderman was a minority owner of the Celtics before buying the Kraken, and I'm not even getting into all the second/third generation owners, or the owners who were former players like Michael Jordan or Jerry Richardson (both not great owners, but that is pro sports experience of a different type.)
 
WeaponOfChoice said:
Suggesting that standing up to the yotes' faithful demonstrates a lack of courage kinda proves my point.
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Nothing has actually been proven. Other than expelling a lot of gas can be humoring (and enLIGHTening).

@MeHateHe In regards to your question when will we know something??? I honestly do not know at this point. Maybe we get an update within the next month, or not until the the end of Q1 2024 when it all seems to be the end game here. That's all depending on the Coyotes and what information they allow out. (Or what might get leaked out via other sources)

Just MNSHO, but from Meruelo's standpoint it can't be all that easy. He could let the public in a little on the process but if he's going to avoid outside groups from interfering. Glendale tried (there are reciepts and I've brought a couple of them up before). Then you had an alledged labor group (Worker Power) based out California who wanted their people in on the TED project and Meruerlo turned them down, so they threw a ton of resources at Tempe1st to facilitate their campaign.

There's also another problem with it in that Coyotes fans were subjected to a lot of promises made by Anthony LeBlanc and IceArizona that something would always happen "in a couple of weeks". Which give birth to the never ending "two weeks" jokes.

Not a real easy position to be in right now.
 
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KevFu said:
There's been some league jumping where a couple guys wanted an NHL team as a way to make a rep and make the jump to an NFL team, but that's about it.
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Tom Dundon never owned a sports franchise prior to buy the Hurricames.

Since then he essentially brought the AAFL (and then shut it down), and now looks to be wanting to bring MLB to Carolina.
 
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aqib said:
Other than the occasional Josh Harris who owns teams in multiple sports have experience in sports before buying a team? In the NFL you have Dave Tepper in Carolina and Jimmy Haslam in Cleveland who were minority owners of the Steelers before buying their own franchises outright and both of them suck.
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again....I'm not arguing what you think I'm arguing....

the "defenders" on this thread keep saying the problem is was and has been OWNERSHIP...and if only they had good owners and a good arena deal...then the fans will suddenly show up and make the team successful....

I'm saying the problem is the MARKET...because it has repeatedly shown over the last 49 years that it has near zero interest in hockey. and no owner, no arena will change that.... especially not a disinterested casino billionaire with no connection to hockey, no particular passion for hockey....and no experience with hockey.....
 
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Skidooboy said:
again....I'm not arguing what you think I'm arguing....

the "defenders" on this thread keep saying the problem is was and has been OWNERSHIP...and if only they had good owners and a good arena deal...then the fans will suddenly show up and make the team successful....

I'm saying the problem is the MARKET...because it has repeatedly shown over the last 49 years that it has near zero interest in hockey. and no owner, no arena will change that.... especially not a disinterested casino billionaire with no connection to hockey, no particular passion for hockey....and no experience with hockey.....
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I know a lot of posters here think that I hate the Coyotes but I've always said the market is perfectly fine. There are a half dozen markets that are similar and the NHL is doing just fine in them. It's not like Dallas is a hotbed of hockey.

But everything around this franchise is just toxic. The few fans that exist eat up every piece of garbage that comes from Bettman's mouth and whoever their current owner is. They are so entitled, demanding subsidies from taxpayers and pretending that there is some sort of public benefit.

The team needs to be moved immediately so that all this toxicity can be washed away. Then in 5 years or so the NHL can look to come back if there are serious people involved with an actual plan for success.
 
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ponder719 said:
On the one hand, at one point they had to have had no experience as an owner before buying into a team, but you do have examples like Michael Andlauer with the Senators, John Sherman with the Royals, the Pegulas when they bought the Bills, Craig Leipold with the weird Preds-Wild thing, Jon Ledecky was a minority owner of the Capitals before buying the Islanders with Scott Malkin, David Bonderman was a minority owner of the Celtics before buying the Kraken, and I'm not even getting into all the second/third generation owners, or the owners who were former players like Michael Jordan or Jerry Richardson (both not great owners, but that is pro sports experience of a different type.)
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Sure, there are exceptions but overall its pretty rare. Also, it doesn't result in the owner doing better if they have prior experience. The Steelers are one of the better run franchises in sports and considered a model of stability, but their former minority owners (Tepper and Haslam) have been awful as full owners.
Also owners of multiple teams can be really good at one and awful at another. The Knicks and Rangers are owned by the same family and the results are drastically different. The Sabers perpetually suck but the Bills have been a contender for the past few years.
Regarding Richardson, he basically had a cup of coffee in the NFL (not that there is anything wrong with that. I would love to be able to say that) but despite how it ended the on-field results were pretty good, they even made the Super Bowl twice during his run.
 
Skidooboy said:
again....I'm not arguing what you think I'm arguing....

the "defenders" on this thread keep saying the problem is was and has been OWNERSHIP...and if only they had good owners and a good arena deal...then the fans will suddenly show up and make the team successful....

I'm saying the problem is the MARKET...because it has repeatedly shown over the last 49 years that it has near zero interest in hockey. and no owner, no arena will change that.... especially not a disinterested casino billionaire with no connection to hockey, no particular passion for hockey....and no experience with hockey.....
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For me, my stance as a "Defender" has always been disagreeing with the concept of a "bad hockey market" in general. There's mountains of evidence that support that every situation is just that: a situation.

The circumstances around the holy trinity of Owner, Arena, Lease determine if a franchise is successful or not.

You've got a bunch of places where hockey has both failed at times and succeeded at times, and things turned around with changes to some combination of arena/owner/lease (Pittsburgh, Tampa, Nashville, Bay Area with Seals vs Sharks; etc, etc).

... And you've always had New York. DECADES of a Top 3 revenue team (Rangers), a middle 3 revenue team (Devils) and bottom 3 revenue team (Islanders) in the same market at the same time. So I'm not sure how you can say that financial success/failure is because of market. The Islanders got new owner, new building and everything's fine financially.


You make apples to apples comparisons with common denominators, and most the time, the "failed market" crowd say that Winnipeg, Quebec and Minnesota were "circumstance" but Atlanta and Phoenix are just failures. What's the common denominator there?


Now, if you want to say there's other markets without NHL teams that would be better for hockey than Phoenix, I can't disagree with you. But I'd also say that there's better markets for the NHL than Buffalo or St. Louis, who no one ever mentions as "bad hockey markets" but they're both almost always in the top 8 in revenue.

Having lived in PHX after hearing reading this thread for a decade or two first, and going to Coyotes games... new arena, franchise certainty and putting all the non-sense behind them and just "being an ordinary franchise" they'd be fine. Being the in the headlines for bankruptcy or relocation or ownership issues is like being the sick person at work, or being sprayed by a skunk: no one wants to go near you.

Open a new building, put the stink behind you, make a playoff run... and they'd be no different than like, the Capitals.

Ernie said:
I know a lot of posters here think that I hate the Coyotes but I've always said the market is perfectly fine. There are a half dozen markets that are similar and the NHL is doing just fine in them. It's not like Dallas is a hotbed of hockey.

But everything around this franchise is just toxic. The few fans that exist eat up every piece of garbage that comes from Bettman's mouth and whoever their current owner is. They are so entitled, demanding subsidies from taxpayers and pretending that there is some sort of public benefit.

The team needs to be moved immediately so that all this toxicity can be washed away. Then in 5 years or so the NHL can look to come back if there are serious people involved with an actual plan for success.
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I agree with your assessment of why they struggle, but not the solution.

New arena does the trick and doesn't cost them their franchise. As for the demands of taxpayer dollars and stuff... that's every owner in every sport in the USA.

But the good news is, it's either one or the other: They'll get a new arena, or they'll move.
 
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KevFu said:
I agree with your assessment of why they struggle, but not the solution.

New arena does the trick and doesn't cost them their franchise. As for the demands of taxpayer dollars and stuff... that's every owner in every sport in the USA.

But the good news is, it's either one or the other: They'll get a new arena, or they'll move.
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Even if they manage to get plans for a new arena, the owner is a supreme douchebag and the team will fail either way. The brand is toxic.
 
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Ernie said:
Even if they manage to get plans for a new arena, the owner is a supreme douchebag and the team will fail either way. The brand is toxic.
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Most of the Valley wouldn't care as long as a successful product was on the ice. People in the valley knew about Sarver's behavior well before the investigation and it wasn't stopping the Suns getting butts in seats.
 
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I'm not saying Meruleo is/isn't a douchebag but I *am* confidently and comfortably saying that on the douchebaggery scale of sports owners where the right side of the scale represents "ultimate douchebag," the scale is already severely weighed down to the floor and beyond before Meruelo's weight could even possibly be factored into the equation.

I do ponder Ernie's "nuclear solution" re: the Yotes from time to time. But you're never going to hear a Yotes fan call for it, and I understand why. It's all good to hypothesize "we can move this team and one day return to Phoenix with a new brand, a new plan and hell, maybe even a little nostalgia on our side." But there's never a guarantee a major sports league will (or won't) return to your market. Working to keep the team you have--- no matter how diminished the brand--- is playing with the tokens you have at the casino as opposed to walking out with a great plan to one day return to spend tokens you have no guarantee the house will ever give you...
 
From Lebrun's latest Athletic piece:

But a front-burner issue for the NHLPA is having the arena mess in Arizona fixed. The Coyotes have been a drag on Hockey Related Revenue (which affects the salary cap and escrow) forever, but they’re especially so now in a 5,000-seat arena.

The NHL shares the sentiment. Bettman at June’s Stanley Cup Final news conference made his strongest comments ever about the Coyotes, basically, having one last shot at figuring out their arena situation.

No one wants to say it out loud, but that is the very thing delaying the league on whether to go ahead with the next expansion wave. It needs to fix Arizona first in case the NHL needs to use a potential expansion city like Houston or Salt Lake City as a relocation city instead.

The Coyotes are hoping to finally have something in place to finalize and announce an arena deal in January, which is pretty much right up against the soft deadline the NHL has given the organization to fish or cut bait.

“They’re looking at a particular piece of property and they’re hoping in the next few weeks, couple of months, to get it finalized,” Commissioner Gary Bettman told our assembled media group after the recent Board of Governors meeting in Seattle. “And they understand that it’s important that it gets finalized in time for us to do next season’s schedule.”
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theathletic.com

LeBrun: Can the NHL handle two more teams? Bringing the question to an expansion veteran

Could the world's hockey talent pool fill another two NHL franchises without diluting the product? Pierre-Edouard Bellemare thinks so.
theathletic.com theathletic.com

tick tock tick tock.

https://theathletic.com/5118366/2023/12/08/arizona-coyotes-future/
 
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Ernie said:
Even if they manage to get plans for a new arena, the owner is a supreme douchebag and the team will fail either way. The brand is toxic.
Click to expand...

Shwan said:
Most of the Valley wouldn't care as long as a successful product was on the ice. People in the valley knew about Sarver's behavior well before the investigation and it wasn't stopping the Suns getting butts in seats.
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Yeah, that's the thing... I don't think it's linear; and in a way, the things that get brought up for making it a "weak" hockey market can actually HELP for a "put it behind them, turn the page" scenario.

The people who ignore the Coyotes because they're just a debacle, ALL THEY KNOW is that the team isn't worth their time because they might move. Once a new deal is done, then it's just the On-Ice stuff. And one playoff run will get fans invested.

Basically, no one is taking the "taste test" on the Coyotes, because all the headlines are bad. When the headlines AFTER a new arena are just about the team being good, people will take the taste test on hockey, and a lot will like it.
 
Ernie said:
Even if they manage to get plans for a new arena, the owner is a supreme douchebag and the team will fail either way. The brand is toxic.
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Why is the owner a "supreme douchebag"?? Where is that coming from? Having met Alex Meruelo - he's actually a super nice and friendly/welcoming man.
 
Yotes2000 said:
Why is the owner a "supreme douchebag"?? Where is that coming from? Having met Alex Meruelo - he's actually a super nice and friendly/welcoming man.
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Just going to leave this here:

Outbursts from those at the very top of the organization were not uncommon; multiple employees detailed profanity-laced dressing-downs by Meruelo, whose vexation could be provoked by such commonplace matters as loss projections or mentions of how other teams around the league do business. (Meruelo envisioned himself as an owner in the mold of the Lightning’s Jeff Vinik but also bristled when compared to him.) Multiple employees said he barked at them if they called him “Alex,” insisting he be addressed as “Mr. Meruelo.”

In news articles and internal meetings, Meruelo often touted his unorthodox comportment as “passionate,” but that oft-repeated notion rang hollow to some. One employee referenced an instance when a senior employee was berated by Meruelo in a meeting of approximately 20 others, for a variety of issues.

“It was painful. You wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” said one attendee.
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theathletic.com

Arizona Coyotes roiled by finger-pointing, fear and financial woes

An investigation revealed claims of a “toxic” work environment and financial troubles exceeding what has previously been disclosed.
theathletic.com theathletic.com
 
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BMN said:
I do ponder Ernie's "nuclear solution" re: the Yotes from time to time. But you're never going to hear a Yotes fan call for it, and I understand why. It's all good to hypothesize "we can move this team and one day return to Phoenix with a new brand, a new plan and hell, maybe even a little nostalgia on our side." But there's never a guarantee a major sports league will (or won't) return to your market. Working to keep the team you have--- no matter how diminished the brand--- is playing with the tokens you have at the casino as opposed to walking out with a great plan to one day return to spend tokens you have no guarantee the house will ever give you...
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It's really optimistic to think that they would see the team move now and replace it with another in the short term. I agree that the clusterf*** that has been the Coyotes has damaged the long-term viability of NHL hockey in Phoenix - people in Phoenix can reasonably look a the NHL and think of nothing but dysfunction and despite the cynicism we all share about the league, it's really not that bad.

I think the best case scenario may have been to move the Coyotes 10 years ago and maybe offer Phoenix an expansion team sometime around now. I think the longer this drags out the more difficult it will be to develop credibility for pro hockey in Phoenix. This is the kind of thing that salts the earthin the market, and if this latest sortie doesn't work, it might be 25 years before anyone tries again.
 
KevFu said:
Yeah, that's the thing... I don't think it's linear; and in a way, the things that get brought up for making it a "weak" hockey market can actually HELP for a "put it behind them, turn the page" scenario.

The people who ignore the Coyotes because they're just a debacle, ALL THEY KNOW is that the team isn't worth their time because they might move. Once a new deal is done, then it's just the On-Ice stuff. And one playoff run will get fans invested.

Basically, no one is taking the "taste test" on the Coyotes, because all the headlines are bad. When the headlines AFTER a new arena are just about the team being good, people will take the taste test on hockey, and a lot will like it.
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Attendance faded when they were downtown after the novelty wore off even though they were a playoff team. It was below 15K after the first full season in Glendale even before bankruptcy.

The other thing is each year half the teams in the league will not make the playoffs. So if you need to make the playoffs all the time to be viable that's not a good market.
 
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Ernie said:
Just going to leave this here:




theathletic.com

Arizona Coyotes roiled by finger-pointing, fear and financial woes

An investigation revealed claims of a “toxic” work environment and financial troubles exceeding what has previously been disclosed.
theathletic.com theathletic.com
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And you’re going to buy without question into someone living in Michigan writing a one-sided story from phone interviews of people who knew they were on their way out the door once Meruelo bought the franchise and discovered just how bad it was run from a business standpoint.

Granted the missed tax payments were a bad thing. The late payments were a bad thing. But they were quickly corrected and has not been an issue since.

People seem to think taking over a business that has been run like a frat club for years and has suffered financially as a result and turning it around is all candy canes and unicorns.

Nope…. Someone has to make the hard choices and eliminate the dead weight and egos ARE going to get bruised in the process.
 
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