The botched handling of the Phoenix Coyotes situation continues to make story lines. They say that ‘Any press is good press’, but I don’t see how this whole situation will have any good effect on the NHL (other than maybe removing a team from a non-hockey market and placing it in a hockey market). Bettman has turned this league into a laughing stock. NHL owners must be shaking their heads. How do they continue to have faith in this guy? It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.
The first auction date to keep the team in Phoenix (at least for a 36 games) has been moved to September 10th, and now can include bids that wish to relocate. So Jimbo Balsillie is back in the picture. If the single goal of this auction is to get the most money to pay back all the creditors, I don’t see how it can’t be Balsillie’s offer, since his bid is supposedly $62.5 million more than the Ice Edge Holdings offer, $64.5 more than Reinsdorf’s no-money-upfront-with-other-stipulations. It’s impossible to predict how this ‘Gong Show’ will play out as it seems that there is a new twist every couple days.
Here are some articles for today on the Coyote mess: