Sportsnet 590 The FAN: Elliotte Friedman on the Jeff Marek Show on the latest developments with the Arizona Coyotes and their search for a new arena.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “It looks like there were some interesting developments with the Arizona Coyotes comma, again, Elliott’s what’s the latest with the Yotes?”
Friedman: “Okay, so there’s a meeting between, it’s the Arizona Land Bureau, whatever it is, and they’re the ones who are in charge of allowing auctions.
And if people have been familiar with this Arizona situation, that one of the things that the equities have discussed, and they claim they’re looking at multiple things, is the idea of buying a piece of land that would be up for auction. And what you have to do is there’s a process. You have to apply to this Arizona land development board and to say that you’re interested in the auction and they can put it up there.
Now their meeting is . The agenda is online. It has to be finalized 24 hours in advance. I called the clerk this morning. This is a memory of my old, like City Council days, Jeff. I called the clerk this morning, she told me that whatever’s online is the final agenda. There’s nothing on there that screams Coyotes on it.
Now, I haven’t done enough of this stuff to know that if they wanted to do this in camera away from prying eyes, they could. But, you know, like put it this way. It doesn’t sound promising.
Now I learned over the years not to jump to conclusions with the Coyotes because now deadlines become deadlines become movable. But if indeed there is going to be …”
Marek: “Speedbumps.”
Friedman: “Yes. If indeed, there’s going to be an announcement this weekend or sometime in the very near future, it doesn’t seem to be good for the current ownership group.
Now, I’ll say this. I think that we are coming to the end of the line for this ownership group. I believe that there isn’t something hard and fast in place in the very near future, they will begin a process of either selling the team or potentially, as you’ve discussed before, Jeff, the NHL taking over the team and selling it to someone else. I believe we’ll get there. I believe one of the reasons we hear the commissioner Commissioner saying nothing negative about them is he knows this could end up in a big legal fight and he doesn’t want to say or do anything that will end up being used against them.
But, like if this doesn’t get, because basically if, if the auction was the idea for an auction was approved tomorrow, it would take from what I understand at least 10 weeks before they could do it. If it gets punted to another meeting next month, that pushes it back another month.
So like, and again, there’s no guarantee they would win the auction. So, it’s just, it doesn’t look great right now for this current ownership group, is what I would say.”