Gothamite

Should it tell us something that on the azcentral.com mobile sports page, Jameson not having the money is the fourth story down?

Sheesh, they can't even crack the front page by moving.

I've long been amazed at how nasty comments on the subject would get.

If Internet outrage could fit in stadium seats, Coyotes fans would fill that arena every night.

Of course they need it. The market is an absolute disaster.

They have an on-ice record most teams would kill for. They're competitive. And yet they play in front of an empty arena.

Put that team in almost any other current market and they'd be at the top of the attendance figures. Yet the Coyotes have never had a profitable season since moving from Winnipeg.

I'm somewhat optimistic that the new Glendale council will hold firm. They have an opportunity to lay all the blame for the bad deal on their predecessors, which always helps politicians do the right thing.

Sure they're willing to draft a new deal, but it looks like the gravy train as we knew it is over. It'll have to be a deal that makes financial sense for the city.

Then the team won't be viable. A massive and ongoing public subsidy is the only thing that could keep the Coyotes out of the red.

I just can't quite believe it might actually be ending.

Something will this up.

Ah, they'll cave and offer an extension. After lots of assurances and promises from Bettman, of course...

Yeah, I'd say that MSG, and the Barclays in Brooklyn, are very easy to get to. At major transit hubs, and everybody here takes the subway (or the LIRR, for Islanders fans next year). Those are certainly easier for everyone to get to than any of our other sports venues.

4) If there are not enough people willing to drive 15-30 miles to see hockey on a weeknight to even half-fill your arena for your division-champion, conference-final-reaching team, your franchise is a lost damn cause

We already knew that, but just to make it official...

8,355 was the announced attendance? Wow for the second game of the season that's pretty pitiful. Even for the Coyotes. Really showing Jamison he should complete that deal aren't they.

And that's the announced attendance, always the rosiest of pictures.

No, 12 days until the team is finally saved.

I really doubt that the league will do that. The other owners have been losing money on Bettman's vanity project for some time now, and only the city's willingness to underwrite those losses have kept them from forcing the issue.

But money to buy the team outright? I don't see them authorizing that. I know, OITGDNHL, but still.

Regardless I do believe the Thrashers deserved at least one more year, just to see if something could have been worked out. It seems painfully clear to me that the NHL sacrificed them to True North just to save the Great Arizona Hockey Experiment.

If Thrashers fans had been able to draw more than a dozen people to their "save the team" rally, I might agree with you.

Regardless of what was happening in Phoenix, the Thrashers were gone. If not to Winnipeg, than somewhere else. Ownership didn't want the team any more, and there was no real indication that the city was any more interested than they were. Fatal combination.

Well, we can only hope.

Refresh my memory: what's the deadline this time, and why do we think it's a real deadline?

“I’ve been at this 18 months, I’ve looked at everything,” Jamison told the Globe and Mail.

And you still don't have investors? I'm not sure that record of spectacular failure is something you want to admit publicly.

Firings, or layoffs? Layoffs would be standard practice for a team facing a long lockout.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Glendale is starting to admit the inevitable: http://www.azcentral.com/community/glendale/articles/20121018glendale-mayor-scruggs-makes-case-letting-coyotes-go.html?nclick_check=1

Glendale has been cranking out budget scenarios to show where the city would stand considering different variables, such as keeping or losing the sales-tax hike and keeping or losing the Phoenix Coyotes.

It's the latter that has caught the attention of Mayor Elaine Scruggs.

No immediate cuts would be needed, according to one scenario that assumes the city keeps the tax hike but loses the hockey team that plays at the city-owned Jobing.com Arena.

Scruggs highlighted the no-cuts scenario at this week's council workshop and called on council members to rethink the Coyotes deal.

The mayor said handing out $71 million to the team as proposed in the next five years would mean city employees would lose jobs and services would be cut.

The mayor said that wasn't acceptable. She added she would rather keep popular city festivals that are in danger of being cut than pay millions to keep the Coyotes.

"I don’t want to turn off the lights in Glendale," Scruggs said, suggesting the hockey and concert arena could attract other events that would keep visitors at Westgate City Center, the nearby shopping and restaurant complex.

Two months between events? They and the GDNHL deserve each other.

Here's an opinion that may or may not be unpopular - I really hate it when people take designs they don't personally like and call them "lazy".

Here's a new one for me: The more I watch the Yanks and Giants play, the more I realize that I really like the look of NNOB. It makes the numbers a little larger and just has a nice, clean look to it. I remember when the Dodgers did this for a couple season back in the mid-2000s and I liked it then, and I still like it now. I wish more MLB teams would go back to NNOB, and maybe even see the practice in other leagues.

It looked terrible on the Dodgers imo.

Only because the Dodgers didn't do it right. They kept the same size numbers in the same place, just removing the NoB.

Had they increased the number size a little and moved them up to fill the hole across the shoulders, it would have looked great. The Yankees, Giants and Red Sox get this right, the Dodgers blew it.

If Milwaukee loses the Bucks, I could see that as a possible. But the point is well taken; there aren't that many attractive relocation options still lurking out there once Quebec is off the list.

Inspired by the once-worn thread...

The Packers should use this shade of gold.

Judging by this one pic, I completely agree.

Now it makes sense - why Bettman is inexplicably driving full-speed to the work stoppage cliff, just when the NHL had recovered from the last disastrous lockout.

Yeah, the title really needs to be changed back.

Under the new format, nobody sees the sub-heading any more.

And at the same time, the man who will likely be the city's next mayor is trying to re-work the deals Glendale used to lure the White Sox and Dodgers' spring training camps to town because the city can't afford to keep up those payments.

http://www.bizjourna...d.html?page=all

Glendale and the NHL. They really do deserve each other.

Not exactly a fair trade, but whatever.

Wish they would buy the old Wombles crest - that was gorgeous.

Yeah, but OITGDNHL.