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

[sneakytitz]

Yeah I can't imagine the NHL being like, that bolt in your hand if in it's proper place would have put you at 50% oh well no reactivation for you. I'd imagine even 40% done they probably give him a bit more time... unless the only reason it was only at 40% was because he wasn't paying his bills to the contractors who stopped work as a result.

Yeah I've wondered about that. Bettman mentioned multiple times "structure rising from the earth" as a big hurdle to clear for Arizona. If the land gets bought, the approvals and government stuff is finished, and he starts building on site and "structure rising from the earth" is happening, is that the 50% they need?

But what if AM or a lender/backer or anyone involved went bankrupt mid construction? Boy wouldn't that be another curveball to this story. This has actually happened before, a few times at least - Valencia's stadium in 2009 was very close to completion when it was abandoned (and I still think it is unfinished to this day); Arco Park in Sacramento was abandoned after $50 million had already been spent on construction because the local sports commission ran out of money.

 

[SunDancer]

This is the first half decent name they have filed a trademark for

I agree. Do any fans over the age of 12 actually like team names that don't end with an S? Some of those suggestions are so tacky and should just stay in the focus group where they were created. Please no more Kraken. Even the teams that don't end in an S eventually take on a name that do (Avs, Bolts).

 

[TheGreenTBer]

I agree. Do any fans over the age of 12 actually like team names that don't end with an S? Some of those suggestions are so tacky and should just stay in the focus group where they were created. Please no more Kraken. Even the teams that don't end in an S eventually take on a name that do (Avs, Bolts).

Minnesota's is the absolute worst, I swear. "Wild" is so horrible it makes my face hurt.

Best ones are the Orlando Solar Bears, Wheeling Nailers and Macon Whoopee, fight me otherwise.

 

[sneakytitz]

Minnesota's is the absolute worst, I swear. "Wild" is so horrible it makes my face hurt.

Best ones are the Orlando Solar Bears, Wheeling Nailers and Macon Whoopee, fight me otherwise.

ECHL has so many good names. Savannah Ghost Pirates is super kino - fits the "most haunted city in America" bill along with the history of piracy based out of the port. The logo and jerseys are perfecto. Florida Everblades is another good one.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

ECHL has so many good names. Savannah Ghost Pirates is super kino - fits the "most haunted city in America" bill along with the history of piracy based out of the port. The logo and jerseys are perfecto. Florida Everblades is another good one.

Tahoe's set to roll next season as well as Bloomington so we'll see how those 2 adapt to the E....

 

[sneakytitz]

Tahoe's set to roll next season as well as Bloomington so we'll see how those 2 adapt to the E....

Forgot about them - again, great names/logos/colors.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

ECHL has so many good names. Savannah Ghost Pirates is super kino - fits the "most haunted city in America" bill along with the history of piracy based out of the port. The logo and jerseys are perfecto. Florida Everblades is another good one.

Yeah both of those are amazing.

ECHL names >>> NHL names

 

[Tawnos]

Minnesota's is the absolute worst, I swear. "Wild" is so horrible it makes my face hurt.

Best ones are the Orlando Solar Bears, Wheeling Nailers and Macon Whoopee, fight me otherwise.

Louisiana Ice Gators and Kentucky Thoroblades are way up there too.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

Louisiana Ice Gators and Kentucky Thoroblades are way up there too.

EXCEPT neither of those teams exist..... Lexington and SJ lasted until 2006....

 

[KevFu]

The game I went to at AWA, it wasn’t full, but you could tell fans were into it. The rabid base had been built. All the howling.

The game I went to in Glendale, just six years later. They already ditched the kachina for the next logo… which seemed like a problem to me. Plus that was against Detroit, the arena was maybe 2/3rds full, and it was 45% Wings fans (not a new phenomenon… and in talking to people in Vegas, we know things are different when an O6 team shows up).

I’m not privy to why the kachinas were ditched; perhaps there was a good reason. It seems to me that the Coyote branding was distinct enough and worked… it wasn’t the problem in and of itself. All the decisions made in leaving downtown seemed to lack certain details of vision and the organization never really recovered.

The move to Glendale made everything about the franchise more sterile.

As the the Kachina, I mean, not exactly a franchise with a long history of solid decision making, period.

Delta Center is on ONE block. The fact that SLC blocks are way too large is on them, though the “wagon train could turn around on the old city streets” width was a thing. The arena is diagonal to the block, so it’s taking up as little of that block as humanly possible. There’s space to work with for any given block, just saying.

They need bigger blocks in SLC because all the families are like 7+ people. You don't really think about it, but if you go to just any random family home in Utah, they're freaking huge. Tje kitchen is enormous. It's almost two full kitchens in one. Walk-in pantries the size of a bedroom.

I'm struggling to find it now, but I believe when Vegas and Seattle did the pre-sale for season tickets before they had team names and rosters, they had a limit of four per customer. Utah's limit is 8 per customer. It's just a slightly different reality there.

 

[ponder719]

Minnesota's is the absolute worst, I swear. "Wild" is so horrible it makes my face hurt.

If I could go back and enforce one decision on the NHL that doesn't have to do with safety or sound business practices, it would be to force Norm Green to change the team name to "Lone Stars" when they moved to Dallas, and leave "North Stars" as available IP for a new Minnesota franchise.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

If I could go back and enforce one decision on the NHL that doesn't have to do with safety or sound business practices, it would be to force Norm Green to change the team name to "Lone Stars" when they moved to Dallas, and leave "North Stars" as available IP for a new Minnesota franchise.

Lone Stars and North Stars are both awesome.

 

[rojac]

I agree. Do any fans over the age of 12 actually like team names that don't end with an S? Some of those suggestions are so tacky and should just stay in the focus group where they were created. Please no more Kraken. Even the teams that don't end in an S eventually take on a name that do (Avs, Bolts).

I'm 62 and have no issues at all with names that are not plurals which is what I am sure you meant to say since words can be plural without ending in S, like Moose. And words can end in S without being plural, like one of my favorite suggestions for SLC, the Utah Express.

As for the nonsense about teams with non-plural names taking on plural names. Aren't those just nicknames like many teams have, such as Buds and Habs. Or do you feel that all nicknames of that sort are a result of a flawed team name?

And even then, I think a lot of those short nicknames are the product of newspaper editors wanting to save space in headlines, especially in the print era.

Also, while the Avalanche and Lightning do have short plural nicknames, as far as I know, the Kraken and the Wild do not. And does anyone who is a more familiar with the NBA know if there are short plural nicknames for the Jazz, Heat, Thunder, or Magic?

 

[rsteen]

If I could go back and enforce one decision on the NHL that doesn't have to do with safety or sound business practices, it would be to force Norm Green to change the team name to "Lone Stars" when they moved to Dallas, and leave "North Stars" as available IP for a new Minnesota franchise.

Probably would still have been too close. Were there alternative names for the Dallas team considered at the time of relocation? North Stars is so much better than Wild.

 

[MNNumbers]

If I could go back and enforce one decision on the NHL that doesn't have to do with safety or sound business practices, it would be to force Norm Green to change the team name to "Lone Stars" when they moved to Dallas, and leave "North Stars" as available IP for a new Minnesota franchise.

As a Minnesota fan, thank you.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Probably would still have been too close. Were there alternative names for the Dallas team considered at the time of relocation? North Stars is so much better than Wild.

I got an idea:

Change every NHL team's name to Roughriders.

 

[Fatass]

S

You’re losing 60 million a year it gets down to which bill do you pay today and which tomorrow. And do it without triggering some other problem.

Easy thing for posters like ourselves to play sideline CEOs here, but until you put yourself in his position you really can’t judge it fairly.

I don’t know if a person needs to be a billionaire to understand why Meurelo has a history of not paying his bills? IMO if Meurelo didn’t have such a poor reputation (not paying his bills included) the Coyotes win that new arena vote. A bad owner can do a lot of damage to a market, especially for hockey in a non traditional market like Arizona.

 

[Brodie]

Minnesota's is the absolute worst, I swear. "Wild" is so horrible it makes my face hurt.

Best ones are the Orlando Solar Bears, Wheeling Nailers and Macon Whoopee, fight me otherwise.

My memory on Minnesota is that they held the name the team contest and the top vote getter was “Northern Lights” but the NHL vetoed it over an objection from the Stars. The second place vote getter was “Blue Ox” but the Columbus expansion team had already settled on Blue Jackets. So they went with Wild, which came third.

It’s a really bad name and it is made worse by the fact that the team itself actively tried to be relatively staid and boring both on and off the ice. Their entire brand is old-fashioned Midwestern hockey and yet they have a name that sounds like an arena football team owned by the members of Motley Crue.

 

[rojac]

If I could go back and enforce one decision on the NHL that doesn't have to do with safety or sound business practices, it would be to force Norm Green to change the team name to "Lone Stars" when they moved to Dallas, and leave "North Stars" as available IP for a new Minnesota franchise.

I've never understood this need for fans to want to reuse of team names for new teams. To me, it always feels like one of the following.

* Fans are in denial about their team leaving. By using the old name, they can pretend the team just took a nap for a few years.

* Fans fear that a new name will be unrecognizable . Basically, no will know that Winnipeg has a hockey team if they're not called the Jets.

* Fans are stick-in-the-muds who are dn't like change.

* Fans are blinded by nostalgia.

*Fans lack imagination.

To me, I liken the situation of a city reusing an old team name to the following scenario. The Smiths have a child called Johnny who go f to Hollywood and changes his name to Billy Brown. The Smiths miss Johnny, so they give birth to anther kid and name him Johnny or the adopt a kid and rename him Johnny. Seems a little creepy to me.

Finally, I think reusing an old team name is a bit disrespectful to the original team. It feels like the new team is cashing in on a legacy that is not theirs.

I grew up as a Montreal Expos fan. In fact, I was probably more of an Expos fan than I was a Leafs fan. I loved the Expos. I loved the name. I loved the logo. And I would love to see Montreal get an MLB team again but the last thing I want is for that team to be called the Expos. It would feel like a pale imitation of the real thing,

 

[awfulwaffle]

I think everyone has at one point or another. If you're not comfortable speaking in public then buying a sports team with a terrible public image is probably not the move for you. He should also avoid running for political office or a career in standup comedy too.

That's why he hired XG to be the spokesman for the Coyotes......

At the risk of sounding like an anti-Coyotes fanatic......I'm in favor of this petition. "We're going to finance this ourselves" sure doesn't look like financing it themselves, when they are looking to take advantage of the theme park district designation.

Every single developer in existence is looking for tax breaks, abatements, or incentives in general. So I take it you are against any and all developments perood?

 

[Brodie]

I've never understood this need for fans to want to reuse of team names for new teams.

I know we’ve been over this many times before but you’re missing the actual reason which is that fans largely don’t give a shit about the legal realities of the franchise system and view teams more as civic institutions than businesses. The connection people feel is to the names and logos of teams, not the piece of paper the owner has in his office from the league authorizing them to own it. Players and coaches and execs and owners come and go many, many times over the course of your fandom, you are cheering for the laundry and the city.

Nobody in Washington cares about Dennis Martinez’s perfect game. Like seriously, not a single Nats fan cares that their team “owns” this event that happened over a decade before they got the team. I’m guessing most former Expos feel zero connection to a team in a city they never played in with a name they never played under and a logo they never wore.

Nobody in Utah cares about Shane Doan. Most fans of this team will not know who the f*** that is beyond being one of their player's dads… and some day even that connection will be gone. You know who loves Shane Doan? Hockey fans in Arizona who loved a team called the Coyotes. You know what Shane Doan cares about? The city he played 20+ years in and lives in to this day. When a new team comes, he’ll be rinkside at those games, not in SLC following that certificate from 1979. The idea that these team records belong to that paper not to the only individuals in the world who care about them, the people who actually watched those games, is a goofy legal fiction.

You’re asking people to conceptualize this like a Vulcan in Star Trek, through the frame of logic and legality. But there’s nothing really logical about sports fandom, it’s right there in the name. Most posters on this website studiously avoid this board because, however much we know better, the idea of the business of hockey is an oxymoron to them. Hockey is Auston Matthews passing to Mitch Marner for a go ahead goal, not guys in suits writing and cashing checks

 

[joelef]

I kinda like yeti

 

[aqib]

That's why he hired XG to be the spokesman for the Coyotes...

Yeah and clearly that was a stupid move. Again if you want to be a private person don't go out and buy controlling interest in a major league sports team, especially one that has as big of an image problem as the Coyotes do.

 

[SunDancer]

Didn't know what he looked like until now.

I love it.

"Gary told me when I first bought the team that this is his dream."

Has anyone ever heard Gary say that about bringing back the Nordiques ... or bringing the NHL to southern Ontario?

Dream big, Gary! Dream big!

 

[TheLegend]

I disagree that optics are out the window. He still wants to own a team here. He is therefore dependent on the good will of local people. There is a huge mountain of trust that he needs to rebuild in order to have that good will.

ETA: There are tremendous sales tax advantages for the owner of the "theme park district" as well. Plus, he gets to use city financing capabilities.

Again, this is "I'm financing this all myself."

It's not even tax meutral because if someone else wins the auction, they aren't going to ask for that, so the sales tax advantages that Meruelo gets wouldn't apply elsewhere. That's tax money given away.

I should have clarified myself a little.... No amount of optics are going to help.

Still would like someone answer the question "How does one give away something that may never exist?"