NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[spartacat_12]

16 minutes ago, IceCap said:

Coyotes apologists- the team deserves another chance. Tempe is closer to their fanbase anyway! Once they get that arena done they're set! 

 

Tempe arena vote fails 

 

Coyotes apologists- They deserve one more chance in Mesa, which is even further away than Glendale! 

Most rational people who were Arizona hockey defenders seem to be in agreement that the Tempe vote was the last ditch effort to keep the team in the market. Even the league has changed their tone about the situation and is no longer including the obligatory “we remain committed to the market” spiel. 
 

The only people who seem to be saying they deserve another chance are actual Coyote fans in AZ, which is understandable, albeit a little delusional. 

[CS85]

Just...just leave.  Ya know?  Go.  They don't want you there.  Where are you supposed to go?  I don't know!  Somewhere else!

[Red Comet]

Did Gary Bettman kill a hooker in Arizona? That’s the only explanation I have for why he’s kept the team there because anyone doing it for pride would’ve checked out before a quarter century hit.

[WestCoastBias]

The Fiesta Mall site looks like a better location than Glendale to me. It's about a similar distance from Downtown Phoenix but it is closer to Tempe and Scottsdale. Mesa, Chandler, and Gilbert are the three largest cities in the Phoenix metro too, aside from Phoenix of course. 

 

That being said I'm not going to advocate for the Coyotes staying in Arizona. But... I don't want them to move to Houston and I doubt the NHL allows them to move to Quebec even though its the right move. So maybe I am advocating for the Coyotes staying in Arizona? Unless Portland gets in on the action or Salt Lake City if they got a new arena.

[habsfan1]

Every player who gets drafted by the Arizona Coyotes will go from playing in a Junior arena to playing in another Junior arena. Not quite the NHL standard.

 

Gary Bettman's making that corporate buck. It's the players that are forced to settle for less.

[mcj882000]

Then maybe the PA should start voicing their displeasure about the situation; make it a labor fight or whatever. I mean a side-effect (or depending on you ask, the intent) of this whole mess is that the players' escrow is being held down, right? So it's affecting them too.

[Dilbert]

4 hours ago, Dilbert said:

I said it before and Ill say it again, Bettman wont stop until the Coyotes have tried every suburb of Phoenix. Mesa is actually further out than Glendale.

They now have a poll on twitter asking where they should build their new home (Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, and Gilbert). They just dont know the meaning of the word quit.

[Sodboy13]

2 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

The actual Coyote players have to think this is all absurd, right? Imagine being a superstar kid in youth and junior hockey your whole childhood, get drafted to the pinnacle of your profession, only to end up in a smaller arena than you've ever played in with your team under constant threat of relocation.

 

Must be a total mind screw.

Clayton Keller reportedly wants out, and Craig Morgan was talking this afternoon that a top Yotes prospect (Logan something?) probably being perfectly happy to park himself at U of Minnesota for another year than having to subject himself to the NHL's Mystery Box. This franchise is well past the point of looking to ice a successful team, anyway. Just name Sam Hinkie GM or something.

 

This thread is hot now for obvious reasons, but I am going to remind everyone that the Coyotes have the option to play at the Mullett for three more seasons, the league dropped $20 million of actual money upfront for getting facilities up to NHL standards there, and if one city in Arizona can launch a cockamamie proposal to bring the team there two days after the votes failed, imagine how many more are going to come to the table between now and 2026.

[The_Admiral]

7 hours ago, IceCap said:

Well that's the kicker, isn't it? For all of Quebec's drawbacks it's still a clear improvement over Arizona. If Arizona had worked out it wouldn't be but Arizona didn't work out. 

So to keep the team there at the expense of QC is just ridiculous. 

 

. . . 

 

*and that's the kicker... Winnipeg proved this can work. It's not hypothetical. Which is more than we can say about Arizona's value as a NHL market. 

 

To add to this, I actually think Quebec City would be a stronger market than Winnipeg is. They have an 18,000-seat arena to Winnipeg's 15,000. There are actual people beyond the immediate metro within a 50-mile or 75-mile radius while Winnipeg is basically an island in a sea of wheat. Their television territory, to ensure reciprocity with Montreal, would presumably be Eastern Ontario to Newfoundland, and even split three ways, that's better than the Jets' territory of Manitoba, Saskatchewan (which they also split three ways), and Thunder Bay/Kenora (which they split with the Leafs). The old Nordiques made tentative inroads in the Maritimes by having their farm teams in Fredericton and Halifax, but never really figured out the broadcasting thing -- I assume that under the ownership of a media company, they would make a full play for the Maritimes as an anglophone supplement to their primary market. It's all a bit jury-rigged, but I think they would still punch well above their weight, just as the Jets do, even at "only" 27th.

[Sport]

I’m telling you Bettman has no interest in actually solving this situation. Maybe he did 10, 5, 3 years ago, but now he’s just going to keep delaying and stretching things out with the Coyotes until he retires and then they’re the next guy’s problem. I know checked out senioritis when I see it. I’ve left jobs before. 

[habsfan1]

16 minutes ago, Sport said:

I’m telling you Bettman has no interest in actually solving this situation. Maybe he did 10, 5, 3 years ago, but now he’s just going to keep delaying and stretching things out with the Coyotes until he retires and then they’re the next guy’s problem. I know checked out senioritis when I see it. I’ve left jobs before. 

 

When he spoke to the media this year, he also completely disregarded the thousands of criticisms of the digital board ads that have been and continue to be heavily crapped on for being annoyingly distracting. It's as if he's sabotaging the league on his way out.

[LMU]

4 hours ago, AJM said:

 

“We look forward to working with the property owner”

 

So, the Coyotes are doing a groveling crawl into the Mesa City Hall to beg to build an arena on land that the city doesn’t even own.

 

[Dilbert]

36 minutes ago, Sport said:

I’m telling you Bettman has no interest in actually solving this situation. Maybe he did 10, 5, 3 years ago, but now he’s just going to keep delaying and stretching things out with the Coyotes until he retires and then they’re the next guy’s problem. I know checked out senioritis when I see it. I’ve left jobs before. 

Hell, Bettman will just invent a new Phoenix suburb, and the team will go there, introducing Committed, Arizona.

[The_Admiral]

Auston Matthews Went To Middle School Around Here And If You Don't Give Us Everything We Want He'll Die, Arizona

[chcarlson23]

1 hour ago, Sodboy13 said:

Clayton Keller reportedly wants out, and Craig Morgan was talking this afternoon that a top Yotes prospect (Logan something?) probably being perfectly happy to park himself at U of Minnesota for another year than having to subject himself to the NHL's Mystery Box.

As a Gophers fan I hope Logan Cooley comes back for another 3 years. And thankfully the Coyotes might just help out with that… 

[FiddySicks]

6 hours ago, Dilbert said:

I said it before and Ill say it again, Bettman wont stop until the Coyotes have tried every suburb of Phoenix. Mesa is actually further out than Glendale.

Ehh, not really. At least from a population standpoint, most of the valley lives east of the city, which is right where Mesa is. Unless there’s been a noticeable shift to the south in the decade(!) since I’ve lived there (which, come to think of it and how big Chandler and Gilbert were getting, it could be), Mesa is a solid spot, and probably around where they should’ve been looking all along. Everything is too damaged now, though. Get em outta the state. 

[The_Admiral]

They've been evicted from one town and voted out of another. David Stern would have been walking these chuckleheads out the door before they could embarrass themselves in a third city. Of course, he probably wouldn't have let them in the door in the first place.

[spartacat_12]

3 hours ago, mcj882000 said:

Then maybe the PA should start voicing their displeasure about the situation; make it a labor fight or whatever. I mean a side-effect (or depending on you ask, the intent) of this whole mess is that the players' escrow is being held down, right? So it's affecting them too.

Elliotte Friedman has mentioned this recently. I guess the PA received some concerns when the Mullett Arena situation was first announced, but they were willing to tolerate it as a stopgap measure while the team worked out the permanent rink deal. Now that Tempe has fallen through he expects the PA to express a lot more concern. 
 

I’m sure the players would generally be opposed to any franchise relocations, but in this case it’s the uncertainty surrounding the team that would be a concern for them. 

[who do you think]

Daily regularly-scheduled reminder that:

 

-The NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies, aka the Hardwood Coyotes, were airlifted over to Memphis after just six awful seasons, GrOwTh PoTeNtIaL in untapped Western Canada be damned. The league hasn't gone back, probably won't go back for a long time, and is absolutely no worse off for not being there.

-The original Charlotte Hornets, after a failed arena pursuit and after the fans turned on George Shinn for whatever the hell he did, got shuttled down to New Orleans; half the size, much less corporate presence. (Charlotte's replacement expansion team has been a train wreck and would probably be the one moved if you put a gun to the BoG's collective head and forced them to relocate one existing franchise by tomorrow).

-The Sonics, after their failed arena pursuit, were moved to Oklahoma :censored:ing City (less than third the size of Seattle going by raw CSA numbers). OKC has a great fanbase, is pretty much a model small-market franchise, and from 2011-2016 were as hot of a national TV property as any other team in the league.

-The NBA bent over backwards to preserve a quality small market with a rabid fanbase (Sacramento) that they pretty much have all to themselves, over chasing the population numbers and muh corporate presence in Seattle just for the sake of being in Seattle.

 

But you see, these moves were Actually Bad^TM, because Business Cosmo said so, on their annual numbers-we-pulled-out-of-our-colon list. The NHL needs these crappy, disinterested GrOwTh PoTeNtIaL markets if they're ever going to catch up with the NBA! You don't understand, there are [number] people in the [giant southern ballsweatville populated by northern ex-pats] area!

 

AND LET US NOT FORGET that once things got truly comical with the Expos, MLB went banging on doors all over the U.S. looking for a place to drop them, and they spent parts of their two lame-duck seasons in Baseball Saskatoon, aka Puerto Rico. (The NHL found a similar arrangement with the Coyotes, back when their situation was merely comical, unacceptable because oof that would be a bad look, my dude.)

[LMU]

34 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

Elliotte Friedman has mentioned this recently. I guess the PA received some concerns when the Mullett Arena situation was first announced, but they were willing to tolerate it as a stopgap measure while the team worked out the permanent rink deal. Now that Tempe has fallen through he expects the PA to express a lot more concern. 
 

I’m sure the players would generally be opposed to any franchise relocations, but in this case it’s the uncertainty surrounding the team that would be a concern for them. 

Also not to be lost is that the PA is now lead by former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, who actually met with the Coyotes as one of his first actions. I would easily see this as his first crusade.