Per Friedman: Coyotes players told team moving to Utah starting next season (Mod warning post #50)

[paulmm3]

Our local triple A baseball team is the Bees. So probably not that. I'm still on Utah Pioneers.

 

[BB79]

This has to be the least useful press release of all time.

That signature is terrible

 

[Hasbro]

Park City, Provo and Ogden are all roughly 45 minutes from SLC and Vegas is about 5.5 hours. On top of that, you draw in fans from southern Idaho and southern Wyoming.

There are like 40 people in that section of Wyoming. Wyo is like Colorado’s Canada, one tenth the population, lives bunched up on the Southern Border, dominated culturally.

 

[Bocephus86]

Our local triple A baseball team is the Bees. So probably not that. I'm still on Utah Pioneers.

This is the best name I've heard so far IMO.

 

[Hasbro]

IMO the only "unconventional" part is the apparent 2-step process for transferring the team. The fact that the Coyotes will "exist in limbo" is irrelevant until/unless a new team lands in the Phoenix area. If a team comes back, it could be the Coyotes. Or the Cactus Wrens. Or the Armadillos. Or whatever. And, it could have the same colors or completely new ones. Whatever the next owner wants.


The Washington Redskins Football Team Commanders, a longtime staple of the NFL, finally buckled under Dan Snyder's ownership. A franchise with a sellout streak dating back to 1968, that once had a season ticket waiting list at least well into the 5 digits (6 digits if you believed the team), saw that sellout streak finally end (which for years it was being propped up, much like Nebraska's football sellout streak has been) and that waiting list dropped to 0.

That's not because Washington won't support an NFL team. It's that Washington won't support an NFL team run by a narcissistic asshat that lets the team plummet toward the bottom of the league and his only concern is how can I squeeze more money out of everyone else for my own enrichment? If Washington responded like that, it's naive for anyone to think far less established markets with far less established teams would respond better.

Yep. Fan disgust is very different than apathy.

Anyone remember how things were for the Hawks before Dollar Bill died.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Full disclosure: I've been part of an instance where decisions were made that couldn't be communicated to others until a larger announcement was made to everyone. It sucked ass. I f***ing hated it. But, I also understood keep your f***ing mouth shut and don't say anything was incredibly important and decisions relating to how people would wind up jobs needed to be made, signed of on and put in place before anything was communicated to those affected.

This is ... nothing like that. I want to say it's unfathomable but ... no, no it's not. It's completely on par for Meruelo and his group.

 

[Bocephus86]

Yep. Fan disgust is very different than apathy.

Anyone remember how things were for the Hawks before Dollar Bill died.

I completely understand it now thanks to the Red Sox ownership over the last 5ish years. No way I want my dollars going to them as a reward for the nonsense they've been pulling.

 

[crowi]

f*** Meruelo.

Condolences to Coyotes fans.

 

[1989]

As I understand, Meruelo's potential second swing at this would be considered an expansion.

Doesn't that mean there are three considerations here?

A) The billion he gets goes back into an expansion fee so it's not free profit; or
B) He walks away never intending to invest in the NHL and keeps the money; or
C) He gets an arena deal but the BoG or owners (I forget who holds the voting power) nix the expansion because they don't want history repeating especially with this owner in this market?

 

[Anglesmith]

So the first thing that sticks out to me here is the cursor on the page, meaning this press release was produced as a screenshot of an active word processor document.

You have to wonder if software subscriptions to unlock the "export" feature were simply outside of the budget.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

As I understand, Meruelo's potential second swing at this would be considered an expansion.

Doesn't that mean there are three considerations here?

A) The billion he gets goes back into an expansion fee so it's not free profit; or
B) He walks away never intending to invest in the NHL and keeps the money; or
C) He gets an arena deal but the BoG or owners (I forget who holds the voting power) nix the expansion because they don't want history repeating especially with this owner in this market?

A would have to be escrowed in some way so that he can't do B, which leaves him with trying to do C, and then the BoG bet is he's never able to do it.

But this seems like such a messy way to draft a deal, and it would be much more simple if ....... wait, I'm talking about the NHL here. Never mind, this makes complete sense.

So the first thing that sticks out to me here is the cursor on the page, meaning this press release was produced as a screenshot of an active word processor document.

You have to wonder if software subscriptions to unlock the "export" feature were simply outside of the budget.

Then I'm surprised they had money for a word processor program, and it wasn't just scrawled on the back of a napkin at McDonald's.

 

[Hasbro]

A would have to be escrowed in some way so that he can't do B, which leaves him with trying to do C, and then the BoG bet is he's never able to do it.

But this seems like such a messy way to draft a deal, and it would be much more simple if ....... wait, I'm talking about the NHL here. Never mind, this makes complete sense.


Then I'm surprised they had money for a word processor program, and it wasn't just scrawled on the back of a napkin at McDonald's.

He'll probably use it to greenmail the NHL in the future.

 

[Hasbro]

Keeping with the music genres the Utah has nothing to do with: the Punks.

 

[CraigBillington]

This is the best name I've heard so far IMO.

To be fair, most name proposals are poor attempts at being funny

 

[T REX]

the Utah Sting sounds cool

 

[Zerotonine]

So the league is allegedly buying the coyotes for 1 billion, then turning around and flipping to Utah for 1.2 billion? In what fking world is the yotes worth 1 billion let alone 1.2. Wtf am I missing???

Didn't Ottawa just sell for a lot less?

 

[BB79]

the Utah Sting sounds cool

Meh, sounds like a minor league team. I would rather them just be the Utah Coyotes/Salt Lake Coyotes. It sounds like the league is leaving the door open for Arizona to return once they figure out how to get an arena built, so maybe they'll save the Coyotes name for them?

 

[majormajor]

So the league is allegedly buying the coyotes for 1 billion, then turning around and flipping to Utah for 1.2 billion? In what fking world is the yotes worth 1 billion let alone 1.2. Wtf am I missing???

Didn't Ottawa just sell for a lot less?

Ottawa sold for $950m, so not much different.

 

[BruinsFan37]

So the league is allegedly buying the coyotes for 1 billion, then turning around and flipping to Utah for 1.2 billion? In what fking world is the yotes worth 1 billion let alone 1.2. Wtf am I missing???

Didn't Ottawa just sell for a lot less?

Your Poor.

People in that income bracket think differently than the other 99.99% of us.

(And before you say "I'm not poor", people in that price bracket would consider anyone with a net-worth less than 8-figures to be poor)

 

[JS19]

As I understand, Meruelo's potential second swing at this would be considered an expansion.

Doesn't that mean there are three considerations here?

A) The billion he gets goes back into an expansion fee so it's not free profit; or
B) He walks away never intending to invest in the NHL and keeps the money; or
C) He gets an arena deal but the BoG or owners (I forget who holds the voting power) nix the expansion because they don't want history repeating especially with this owner in this market?

The June land auction is gonna reveal a lot about how serious/unserious Meruelo is. If he doesn't bid, he will look like a giant asshole that pocketed the 1bil and was a giant snake oil salesman. If he bids, he's serious about bringing an arena. That said, the fact that he seemingly didn't seem to plan much ahead of moving out of Mullet makes me think he's an unserious owner.

The other aspect that makes this even more interesting is the fact that there are reports that the expansion fee is getting cranked to 2bil, which frankly is just insane. But funnily enough, it would mean that Meruelo would technically be on the hook for paying 1bil more in addition to the 1bil he received from the NHL sale, if the fee is enforced in this hypothetical.

The NHL giving him a 5 year window tells me that they're not quite optimistic that Meruelo meets the deadline (that, or they're giving him an out). With Houston/Atlanta in the horizon, the NHL can afford to shelve Phoenix for the near future.

 

[Sniper99]

??? How do you know no one wants to play there?

He doesnt, just full of crap, nothing to see here.

 

[Daximus]

It's really to bad that Toronto has the Raptors.

Utah Raptors would be a sick NHL team name and has some actual connections to the area unlike the NBA team.

I thought Seattle should have gone with Seattle Sasquatch but they decided to go with the meme name instead of something with some actual local history. So might as well do the same with Utah.

Utah Yeti,

Let's go all in with stealing mythological creatures from across the pond.

 

[StickShift]

I saw the name ‘Legends’ pop-up somewhere and I thought that was smart. It’s a little bit of a nod to the region’s pioneers, national parks, and natural wonders. Evokes a sense of grandeur and heroism too.

It doesn’t force the alliteration or most obvious themes (bees, hives, religion, mountains, etc).

 

[banks]

Coyotes fans, I'm so sorry for the news. Losing a team blows. You deserved better from team ownership since the very start. I've always liked the Coyotes.

As for a team name, it should be the Utah Phoenix. A firebird makes a crazy cool logo, and it's a great reference to the team originally being the Phoenix Coyotes.

 

[Legion34]

Coyotes fans, I'm so sorry for the news. Losing a team blows. You deserved better from team ownership since the very start. I've always liked the Coyotes.

As for a team name, it should be the Utah Phoenix. A firebird makes a crazy cool logo, and it's a great reference to the team originally being the Phoenix Coyotes.

Actually I kinda like that. Hmmmm