CXLVIII - Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo had 'productive' meeting with Phoenix mayor

[GKJ]

I do feel like we're now in a situation that we're going to be clarifying on BoH forever, just like the myth that Atlanta failed as a market. That's because it involves a technicialty.

This isn't a relocation. It's a deactivation of one franchise and the expansion of another where, in lieu of a traditional expansion draft, the expansion team is getting all of the players from the deactivated franchise.

You're already seeing this issue in the reactions. They're totally understandable. I'm just saying it's going to be something that the various members of this board are going to have to clarify repeatedly.

It’s the same as to why it gets explained that Utah is the one

 

[Tawnos]

It’s the same as to why it gets explained that Utah is the one

My favorite is the "only 220k people"

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I feel like league semantics is just asking for some people to "well actually" each other. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, etc's like a duck, then someone else saying it's actually a yaddayaddabird just means you can roll your eyes at the person for being pedantic. The Yotes are relocating to Utah, and if Meruelo gets his affairs in order to build a new arena (a HUGE if) then he gets an expansion team in all but name.

And I feel like we get too hung up on franchise lineage. Simple fact, most Utahns aren't going to care what the Yotes did in Arizona any more so than they will care about what the Jets1.0 did in Winnipeg. Because why should they? Until fall, the Yotes were just one of many teams that existed in a league that didn't play in their city. Fans care about what happens in their market and what they root for. There are assuredly more Avs fans that care about the NHL Rockies than Devils fans, after all, and likewise more Wild fans passionate about what the North Stars did in the 70s and 80s than Dallas Stars fans.

The Yotes lineage being technically intact is nice, I guess, but that's basiclaly just trivia for the future rather than worrying about arguing over.

 

[GKJ]

My favorite is the "only 220k people"

People’s Wikipedia game not very good

 

[Tawnos]

I feel like league semantics is just asking for some people to "well actually" each other. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, etc's like a duck, then someone else saying it's actually a yaddayaddabird just means you can roll your eyes at the person for being pedantic. The Yotes are relocating to Utah, and if Meruelo gets his affairs in order to build a new arena (a HUGE if) then he gets an expansion team in all but name.

And I feel like we get too hung up on franchise lineage. Simple fact, most Utahns aren't going to care what the Yotes did in Arizona any more so than they will care about what the Jets1.0 did in Winnipeg. Because why should they? Until fall, the Yotes were just one of many teams that existed in a league that didn't play in their city. Fans care about what happens in their market and what they root for. There are assuredly more Avs fans that care about the NHL Rockies than Devils fans, after all, and likewise more Wild fans passionate about what the North Stars did in the 70s and 80s than Dallas Stars fans.

The Yotes lineage being technically intact is nice, I guess, but that's basiclaly just trivia for the future rather than worrying about arguing over.

This is the Business board. There's always been a higher standard here of precise language to describe the nuances of one situation versus another. It's not being pedantic, it's informing people of what really happened.

I'll put it this way: from the perspective of the game on the ice and the teams in the standings, the Coyotes are relocating. From the business perspective, they are not. And since it's the business board, the business perspective is what we're mainly interested in discussing.

 

[Brodie]

I feel like league semantics is just asking for some people to "well actually" each other. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, etc's like a duck, then someone else saying it's actually a yaddayaddabird just means you can roll your eyes at the person for being pedantic. The Yotes are relocating to Utah, and if Meruelo gets his affairs in order to build a new arena (a HUGE if) then he gets an expansion team in all but name.

And I feel like we get too hung up on franchise lineage. Simple fact, most Utahns aren't going to care what the Yotes did in Arizona any more so than they will care about what the Jets1.0 did in Winnipeg. Because why should they? Until fall, the Yotes were just one of many teams that existed in a league that didn't play in their city. Fans care about what happens in their market and what they root for. There are assuredly more Avs fans that care about the NHL Rockies than Devils fans, after all, and likewise more Wild fans passionate about what the North Stars did in the 70s and 80s than Dallas Stars fans.

The Yotes lineage being technically intact is nice, I guess, but that's basiclaly just trivia for the future rather than worrying about arguing over.

Right, it's like the semantic arguments about what happened to the Golden Seals re: the Sharks, etc. It doesn't actually matter, totally a semantic argument that has zero impact on anyone or anything.

I know there are people on here with very deeply held positions on this stuff for some reason but 99% of fans do not care about legal fictions and technicalities. Future players in Phoenix will be compared to Shane Doan, not a single person in Salt Lake City will ever give any shits about
Keith Tkachuk's 1996-97 stats. The biggest things people care about team names and logos staying the same. At the end of the day, this is all anyone is invested in. Everything else is ephemeral.

At the end of the day, the whole legal fiction of the Ravens as an expansion teams and the Browns "deactivation" was a rebuke against Art Modell by a league that couldn't stop him from exposing them to lawsuits and abysmal PR. People have latched onto it because, at the end of the day, Baltimoreans wish they could have the Colts and Seattlites long for the Sonics

 

[No Fun Shogun]

There's a mild difference between being exact with our language, which is all well and good, and just not paying lip service to random corporate distinctions. The team's moving, Utah fans suddenly exist en masse while Yotes fans are going to be stuck without a team of their own, and maybe a new team will move back into the market in 5 or so years that gets to keep the history books.

And even more so, we don't know if Meruelo will get what he claims to want to do actually done. No point in being preemptively and specifically exact in our terminology for a potentiality.

 

[Tawnos]

Right, it's like the semantic arguments about what happened to the Golden Seals re: the Sharks, etc. It doesn't actually matter, totally a semantic argument that has zero impact on anyone or anything.

I know there are people on here with very deeply held positions on this stuff for some reason but 99% of fans do not care about legal fictions and technicalities. Future players in Phoenix will be compared to Shane Doan, not a single person in Salt Lake City will ever give any shits about
Keith Tkachuk's 1996-97 stats. The biggest things people care about team names and logos staying the same. At the end of the day, this is all anyone is invested in. Everything else is ephemeral

See... you say that the Golden Seals > Barons > Sharks things doesn't matter... but in fact, it DOES matter because it provides precedent for what's happening with the Coyotes right now.

99% of fans don't come to the business board, because they don't care about that side of the sport.

 

[Fatass]

There's a mild difference between being exact with our language, which is all well and good, and just not paying lip service to random corporate distinctions. The team's moving, Utah fans suddenly exist en masse while Yotes fans are going to be stuck without a team of their own, and maybe a new team will move back into the market in 5 or so years that gets to keep the history books.

And even more so, we don't know if Meruelo will get what he claims to want to do actually done. No point in being preemptively and specifically exact in our terminology for a potentiality.

What are the odds Meruelo will get the arena built and still the billion needed to buy an expansion team in the five years?

 

[Tawnos]

There's a mild difference between being exact with our language, which is all well and good, and just not paying lip service to random corporate distinctions. The team's moving, Utah fans suddenly exist en masse while Yotes fans are going to be stuck without a team of their own, and maybe a new team will move back into the market in 5 or so years that gets to keep the history books.

And even more so, we don't know if Meruelo will get what he claims to want to do actually done. No point in being preemptively and specifically exact in our terminology for a potentiality.

I was only speaking to the situation as we know it right now. If he doesn't successfully reactivate the franchise, then the situation changes from what it is right now. Right now, the Coyotes are going to be deactivated and Utah is getting an expansion team. It's not a "random corporate distinction." It's what is happening.

I'm just going off what I was told when I was a moderator on this board (a looong time ago at this point) and what's made these megathreads such a highlight of the boards over the years. Things are looser around here than they were when Fugu and killion were running it, and that's fine, but there's still a massive difference between the type of conversation in this thread and the conversation about the topic on the main board.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

What are the odds Meruelo will get the arena built and still the billion needed to buy an expansion team in the five years?

My full expectation is that he's going to take the money and run once he loses the land auction. Needless to say, I have a less than positive impression of him.

 

[Fatass]

My full expectation is that he's going to take the money and run once he loses the land auction. Needless to say, I have a less than positive impression of him.

I’m thinking he makes a bid for the land that he knows will not win. He wins that land and it will eat up his billion very fast

 

[Brodie]

See... you say that the Golden Seals > Barons > Sharks things doesn't matter... but in fact, it DOES matter because it provides precedent for what's happening with the Coyotes right now.

99% of fans don't come to the business board, because they don't care about that side of the sport.

But at the end of the day, it really DOESN'T matter because it was a fiction. Are the Sharks the demerged Seals/Barons franchise? No, not legally. Do they have the "heritage" of that franchise? Not outside the minds of a few rapidly fading Bay Area hockey fans. What happened there happened because of a complex series of moves by the Gund family... it is an interesting fun fact but it doesn't mean anything to anyone.

It's similar to the widely circulated claim that technically if you want to be precise the LA Clippers are ackshually the Boston Celtics and the Celtics are the Buffalo Braves. It's a fun piece of trivia that both isn't actually true and doesn't matter anyway because the Clippers neither claim that history and their fans wouldn't care about it if they did.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I was only speaking to the situation as we know it right now. If he doesn't successfully reactivate the franchise, then the situation changes from what it is right now. Right now, the Coyotes are going to be deactivated and Utah is getting an expansion team. It's not a "random corporate distinction." It's what is happening.

I'm just going off what I was told when I was a moderator on this board (a looong time ago at this point) and what's made these megathreads such a highlight of the boards over the years. Even now, there's a massive difference between the type of conversation in this thread and the conversation about the topic on the main board.

I get that, and I absolutely agree that conversations on the BoH should be more serious than conversations on the main board. Distinctions are good and well and we should account for them when being specific about the business side of things.

But, assuming the reports are true, they're going to pack up the hockey side of things and move them to a completely different market. That's a relocation. If that deserves an asterisks is another matter, but the team's relocating.

 

[LT]

I think the franchise deactivation will actually be important if/when Meruelo drops out. What happens then? If the NHL still wants to eventually return to Phoenix, will it simply be reactivated but with a different owner? Will the league and new owner still need to buy certain assets back from Meruelo? Or will the Coyotes franchise go from deactivated to folded, with a new franchise and new owner brought up in its place?

I think the fact that they want to leave the ashes of a franchise in Phoenix is a good sign for the NHL's return to the city. But I wonder if it makes that eventual return more complicated legally, should things with AM play out how we are all expecting them too.

 

[Brodie]

The NBA brokered a deal to keep the Sonics legacy in Seattle and here we are in a world where there are high school juniors who never saw an NBA game in Seattle

 

[Tawnos]

I get that, and I absolutely agree that conversations on the BoH should be more serious than conversations on the main board. Distinctions are good and well and we should account for them when being specific about the business side of things.

But, assuming the reports are true, they're going to pack up the hockey side of things and move them to a completely different market. That's a relocation. If that deserves an asterisks is another matter, but the team's relocating.

There is a legitimate business distinction to be made there too. My understanding of it is that the new expansion team is purchasing the hockey operations of the deactivated team. This is a new concept for the NHL, to be sure and it definitely is an in-the-weeds legal technicality.

I'll use this analogy. Will's Deli is looking to open a second location. At the same time he's doing that, Jack's Deli is closing it's doors. Will's Second Deli is not taking over the space that Jack's was in, but is moving elsewhere in the city. Rather than getting all new equipment and finding a staff from scratch, Will purchases all of the equipment in Jack's Deli and brings his whole staff to the new Will's. Did Jack's Deli relocate?

 

[Llama19]

I do feel like we're now in a situation that we're going to be clarifying on BoH forever, just like the myth that Atlanta failed as a market. That's because it involves a technicialty.

This isn't a relocation. It's a deactivation of one franchise and the expansion of another where, in lieu of a traditional expansion draft, the expansion team is getting all of the players from the deactivated franchise.

You're already seeing this issue in the reactions. They're totally understandable. I'm just saying it's going to be something that the various members of this board are going to have to clarify repeatedly.

We do not recognize this 'technicality'...

 

[Yukon Joe]

So interesting almost-a-story - it was suggested on Twitter that because it's a "transfer of hockey operations", and not the franchise moving, that any Coyotes players with a no-move would be able to block their forced move to Utah.

Except of course nobody on the Yotes has a no-move clause. A few have modified no trades, but that's it

 

[No Fun Shogun]

There is a legitimate business distinction to be made there too. My understanding of it is that the new expansion team is purchasing the hockey operations of the deactivated team. This is a new concept for the NHL, to be sure and it definitely is an in-the-weeds legal technicality.

I'll use this analogy. Will's Deli is looking to open a second location. At the same time he's doing that, Jack's Deli is closing it's doors. Will's Second Deli is not taking over the space that Jack's was in, but is moving elsewhere in the city. Rather than getting all new equipment and finding a staff from scratch, Will purchases all of the equipment in Jack's Deli and brings his whole staff to the new Will's. Did Jack's Deli relocate?

That's not really an apples to apples comparison, as it's comparing an entity shuttering and having its assets bought out to an entity doubling and buying assets. It's also an analogy that most Yotes fans probably wouldn't like much, as it's a pretty definitive end to Jack's Deli fans in the neighborhood. To those consumers, it's more akin to the contraction of a sports franchise.

It'd be more apt to compare it with a restaurant with a specific dish or ethnic food that's not very common, say something delicious like Ethiopian food. If a place in your neighborhood is your favorite restaurant in the world serving that, it really makes no difference to you if the restaurant closes outright, moves to a difficult to reach neighborhood, or is replaced by a different Ethiopian restaurant also on the other side of the city, you're still kind of SOL when it comes to your regular injera cravings.

 

[GKJ]

So interesting almost-a-story - it was suggested on Twitter that because it's a "transfer of hockey operations", and not the franchise moving, that any Coyotes players with a no-move would be able to block their forced move to Utah.

Except of course nobody on the Yotes has a no-move clause. A few have modified no trades, but that's it

And what would they have done? Play for an inactive franchise?

Dudes just be skating around practice rinks

 

[Yukon Joe]

And what would they have done? Play for an inactive franchise?

Dudes just be skating around practice rinks

We'll never know because no one has a no-move.

Presumably though the player would try to be released from their contract and be able to sign with a team of their choice.

 

[Tawnos]

That's not really an apples to apples comparison, as it's comparing an entity shuttering and having its assets bought out to an entity doubling and buying assets. It's also an analogy that most Yotes fans probably wouldn't like much, as it's a pretty definitive end to Jack's Deli fans in the neighborhood. To those consumers, it's more akin to the contraction of a sports franchise.

It'd be more apt to compare it with a restaurant with a specific dish or ethnic food that's not very common, say something delicious like Ethiopian food. If a place in your neighborhood is your favorite restaurant in the world serving that, it really makes no difference to you if the restaurant closes outright, moves to a difficult to reach neighborhood, or is replaced by a different Ethiopian restaurant also on the other side of the city, you're still kind of SOL when it comes to your regular injera cravings.

At the moment, the Coyotes *are* shuttering. The wrinkle is that, because it's a franchise, the term for it is deactivating.

I guess to extend the analogy, Jack closed his business but the plan was to do it temporarily. While that seems strange, the plan to reopen at a later date did happen with two restaurants in my neighborhood within the last 10 years (one a diner and the other a burrito place). The sale of equipment and transfer of staff didn't happen the way in my analogy, of course. So when Jack opens back up, it'll be in the same part of town but maybe not in the same exact building. Jack's reopening may or may not happen, and when he does he's going to need to hire all new staff and buy all new equipment. The only things that will be the same are the name of the restaurant and the neighborhood it's in.

 

[Stumbledore]

I feel like league semantics is just asking for some people to "well actually" each other. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, etc's like a duck, then someone else saying it's actually a yaddayaddabird just means you can roll your eyes at the person for being pedantic.

If you're the NHL, all that really matters is keeping the duck or the yaddabird away from discovery.

As much as I dislike Bettman, I'm impressed with the league's solution here.

 

[Tawnos]

But at the end of the day, it really DOESN'T matter because it was a fiction. Are the Sharks the demerged Seals/Barons franchise? No, not legally. Do they have the "heritage" of that franchise? Not outside the minds of a few rapidly fading Bay Area hockey fans. What happened there happened because of a complex series of moves by the Gund family... it is an interesting fun fact but it doesn't mean anything to anyone.

Believe it or not, the NHL has never really made this clear to my knowledge. There was language in the award letter for the Senators that connected them to the deactivated Senators/Eagles franchise from the 30s, but I've never heard or read anything either way with the Sharks. And it means something mainly because it explains why there was a dispersal draft and why the North Stars were allowed to participate the expansion draft in 1991. It might not matter to you, but it matters to the topic.