Our next NHL franchise will be different. This will represent the best of ourselves, as well as our revenge.
This will prove that we have always been a great hockey town.
Our next NHL franchise will be worth the wait. We lost a talented, local team to a smaller market in Salt Lake City. But we were freed from a bad landlord, an angry billionaire who peddled crazy ideas while ignoring his bills and generally paying by his own rules. Good riddance.
Good owners use their fortunes to pursue greater, more lasting wealth, the kind that comes with greatness, glory, and championship parades. Bad landlords can’t see beyond the money. They tend to stick around for decades. They can poison a good sports town.
Alex Meruelo will be remembered as one of the worst. He had no connection with anyone. He saw no value in political capital or public relations. He was expelled in Glendale and massacred a vote in Tempe. He either didn’t care or didn’t know that sports franchises are public trusts that must serve and reflect their communities, businesses that rely on collaboration and goodwill.
Really. How stupid does an owner have to be to allow a subordinate to ostracize and insult Shane Doan, one of the NHL’s greatest captains and brand ambassadors?
It’s amazing, but we had two in Arizona. You probably remember a previous owner who sent an unqualified general manager to fire Doan over breakfast.
But only Meruelo could accomplish what no other force of darkness could ever accomplish. He was the one who led Doan to another NHL franchise.
The incompetence is astounding and one wonders how ultra-rich people can be so stupid. Are they blinded by greed? Or is it greed that makes them rich in the first place? Are they the bootlickers and sycophants who isolate their lives, shaking their heads at every bad decision?
The next owner of the Coyotes has to be better. We need to find our hockey version of Mat Ishbia, who has already hit for the trifecta in the Valley. He replaced the reviled Robert Sarver; he spends a lot on basketball players; and publicly swore his stewardship to all valley sports fans. He demonstrated the kind of conscientiousness you don’t always get in billionaires.
Our next NHL franchise will also face a difficult decision. Will they still be the Coyotes? Or will they be lucky enough to have a whole new name? For most of their 28 years in the Valley, the Coyotes were a pit of dysfunction. Every time they became a topic of discussion in the Valley, it was for something scandalous or bizarre. As in, what have they done now?
With all due respect to the Kachina jersey, part of me wants to turn the brand into a smoking pile of ashes. But perhaps we are doing exactly the opposite. Perhaps we accept the ugliness of our history as a sign of our toughness and resilience. After all, our hockey team left us. We are not running away from anything.
Either way, our next NHL franchise will be different from top to bottom. They will be skating on a clean slate. We will accept nothing less.
News Source : arizonasports.com
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