mcj882000

If you really think the NHL would prefer their most valuable franchise in the league's biggest market not winning a championship, you're delusional. Matter of fact, I'll use this as a jumping-off point for anyone crying Conspiracy: if Bettman's NHL was really rigging or scripting games, don't you think their three most valuable franchises would have won more than two championships during his administration, and more than none in the last 30 years? Use your head.

Oh boy, well that's not good news, both for tomorrow and in general...

Man, the Canucks are a frustrating team to watch sometimes. Go down 2-0 thanks to sloppy, panicky play, scratch & claw back to tie the game, then sit back, play for overtime & immediately give up the losing goal. Did they learn nothing from game 2, where they did the same thing & got the same result?

It is 2013. The Maple Leafs have rallied from a 3-1 first round series deficit against the Bruins with a 2-1 game 6 win to force game 7 in Boston. It is 2018. The Maple Leafs have rallied from a 3-1 first round series deficit against the Bruins with a 3-1 game 6 win to force game 7 in Boston. It is 2024. The Maple Leafs have rallied from a 3-1 first round series deficit against the Bruins with a 2-1 game 6 win to force game 7 in Boston.

Hey, uh, you're aware you're slandering a couple of this site's mods with that statement, right?

No thanks, we've got plenty of those already.

Uncensored version here.

Yes, in fact they even made a movie about him last year. Vine star-turned-voice actor ProZD is in it for a bit. The Hamilton NHL mess even factors into the film a little, and one of the guys from This Hour Has 22 Minutes plays Gary Bettman!

Over the last month or so I've had a friend insist to me that it could have worked in Phoenix if they only had a good owner, and to be fair yeah, they're probably not wrong; a hypothetical guy who had both the money to buy the team and the competence to hire the right people to run things probably would have helped fix the ship. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in, and that remains a hypothetical. Even more unfortunately, I'm not sure that ever could have been in play to begin with. Even just to start off, "good" sports team owners (relatively speaking) are already hard to come by; for every Mike Illitch it feels like there's a half-dozen Jeff Fishers, Jeff Lorias, Harold Ballards, Donald Sterlings, Dan Snyders, etc. But even within that range of "good" would-be owners, I'm not sure if the Coyotes ever could have been bought by one, especially post-2009 - I think it's safe to assume that anyone who could have stepped up probably saw a team that's never turned a profit in Arizona, couldn't routinely sell out even the awkward 16k-seat arena in downtown Phoenix when they were good, let alone the 17k-seat arena in Glendale when they were mostly-mediocre, and with a history of bankruptcy, ownership turnover and political haggling over new arenas, and "nope'd" right out of the conversation; they would have seen that the attempt just wasn't worth it. And so what does that leave us with? The weird opportunists like George Gosbee just looking for a quick pump-and-dump opportunity, or the out-and-out con artists like Matt Hulsizer probably was, looking to just defraud their way into the league without any actual money. At best, you get a naïve optimist who thinks he can save the team but quickly realizes how in-over-his-head he is and bails after a season or two. The kind of owner they needed to turn things around would have been the kind of person smart enough to see what a waste of time, money and effort it would be to try.

From the video game side of things, I remember it was late enough in the offseason that NHL 12 shipped with the Jets in just generic NHL home & away jerseys, with the actual jerseys being patched in later & the OG Jets' 80s jerseys included as throwbacks, just to give people before the patch came out, or who's consoles couldn't go online & thus couldn't get the patch, any kind of actual jersey option. I forget what kind of stand-ins the AHL's St. John's Ice Caps got, but whatever it was, offline players were stuck with it. Still, could've been worse - as I mentioned years ago in the "wrong jerseys in games that should know better" thread, the Colorado Avalanche's branding came so late in the process (the name was revealed in August '95 according to Wikipedia), after the Rocky Mountain Extreme fiasco delayed things, that EA decided to just keep them as the Quebec Nordiques in NHL 96 when it shipped in early-October. (Similarly, because the Seattle SuperSonics' relocation to OKC didn't officially happen until late-August 2008, 2K Sports kept them as the SuperSonics in the PS2 versions of NBA 2K9 & patched in the appropriate branding for the 360 & PS3 versions.)

He has the "chance", but I'd be willing to bet he just takes the money and runs. The vibe I get based on what I've seen said about him from Coyotes diehards, such as they are, especially among those who actually live in Arizona, is that they hate Meurelo's guts now and wouldn't support him even if he did come back with a new team; meaning that there's strong odds that the Coyotes Mk. 2 could somehow be even more from the start than the original Coyotes were.

Same; as I've noted before Houston hasn't had any kind of hockey team since Les Alexander booted the Aeros out of Toyota Center and into Iowa in 2013. The only reason Houston's even up for consideration now is because Les finally sold the Rockets in 2017. 10 years is a long time for a market to go entirely unserved; even Phoenix still had the IHL's Roadrunners when the Coyotes came to town, IMO that's enough time for any local interest in the sport to wither away altogether. Despite that I'm cautiously optimistic still; as long as they're owned by the Rockets' owner and playing at Toyota Center, it'll probably go fine, perhaps merely an unremarkable middle-of-the-road success, which would still be a huge step up from Phoenix. Yet I'm also wary that if the situation ever changed, if the Rockets sold the Houston NHLers and/or made them get a new home elsewhere in town, I actually think it could have the potential to be a bigger failure than the Coyotes have been.

Now I'm not a resident, but looking at a map, Desert Ridge is actually farther away from the metro than Tempe, Mesa or even Glendale are. Granted it's at least somewhat close to Scottsdale, where all of the Coyotes' "real" fans allegedly live (though still not as close as Tempe or Mesa are, lol), but suffice to say I'm also skeptical that, even if it gets built, that they'll actually fill the place regularly & turn a profit for once.

Apologies for the late reply, but I remember this! The story about why it's unused is hilarious: sometime in the late-00s, I wanna say 2008 or 2009, they were planning on bringing these back for the playoffs when they made it... but then, of course, they missed the playoffs (as they did every year between the last two lockouts) and couldn't use them. Oops.

Good news, this set was finally added to 2K24. And these ones are in 2K23 already, along with other sets like the last San Diego Clippers jerseys & the early-00s Cavaliers jerseys (the minimalist black/orange/light blue ones) but in a frustratingly limited way: they're only useable if you play as that team in those specific years of Eras, and either keep them wearing that yourself or export it to a more modern MyNBA file, an option that'll only be available for another year or so. As well, those Cavs jerseys and the Clippers' 90s jerseys (which aren't quite the one you were asking about, but it's pretty darn close) have also been added to their teams' normal rotations for 2K24.