Jerry Moyes to Gary Bettman: Up Yours

Yesterday was a huge day as far as the Phoenix Coyotes saga goes as the NHL and Jerry Moyes headed to court to hash out this whole bankruptcy issue. When they got there, however, the big dust up was over who, exactly was in control of the team to decide it's future.

And you thought this would be easy, didn't you?

Apparently since that entire issue is still a sticky mess, like I was talking about a little bit here the other day, Judge Redfield Baum said, "Screw you guys you're going to mediation." Well not quite like that, but he did say that's how this thing will get squared away.

In the aftermath of that decision as well as the choice by Judge Baum to have a relocation hearing in June just a week ahead of the draft has turned this already ample PR game into a sideshow of Bearded Lady proportions.

The good news out of this for fans in Phoenix is that their team probably isn't going anywhere next season. The bad news is that their maybe/maybe not owner Jerry Moyes is busy scorching the earth to make it impossible for anyone with the money needed to make hockey in the desert work to make the investment.

"Even a winning team would not stop us from losing money unless we received some concessions," Moyes said in his letter.

He made no apology for trying to abandon the Phoenix market by selling the team to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, whose $212.5 million (all figures U.S.) offer is conditional upon moving the franchise to Hamilton.

"I have a responsibility to all of the creditors of this business," said Moyes. "No one other than Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie's company has offered enough to pay the creditors, which led to my initiating a court-supervised sale process. This process will be open and transparent, and all offers current and future must be fairly examined; guaranteeing an equitable offer."

In other words, Moyes had this to say to Gary Bettman for butting in on his attempt to backdoor Jim Balsillie into owning and moving the franchise:


Dear Anyone Trying To Keep Hockey In Glendale: Up yours!

Unfortunately for Jerry Moyes and NHL fans in southern Ontario, the NHL and Gary Bettman are always able to unearth someone who wants to keep the show around locally. In this case, word has come out that Coyotes minority owner John Breslow wants to right the ship in Glendale and keep the team there.

Well if that ain't a spike strip on the highway for the trucking magnate.

Of course, since Breslow is a bit late to the party and given how well him stepping up to save the franchise in Arizona would work out for Bettman, you'll have to forgive me if I worry about his full-fledged financial credentials.

After all, the last guy that stepped up this big to keep a team in a struggling market seemed to have some issues of his own.

I certainly don't think that Breslow is a crook here, but this is the bed Herr Bettman has made for us by putting his faith in people who are scumbags, scam artists and all around pricks.

That's not even taking into account Len Barrie and Oren Koules in Tampa Bay who have made it their mission to ruin Tampa, Florida as the shining example of how the NHL can work in a non-traditional hockey market.

I know that sounds goofy and all, but the attendance figures speak for themselves in the case of the Lightning.

2009: Lightning were 22nd in average attendance (out of 30) filling up at an 85.6% rate and over 16,497 per game.

In previous seasons?

2008: 8th (18,692 per game)
2007: 3rd (19,876 per game) filling at 100.6%
2006: 2nd (20,509 per game)
2005: No Season - Thanks Gary

Forgive me if I don't completely buy into John Breslow being the knight in shining armor for the Coyotes because Gary's track record in being able to pick a winner is less-than stellar.

Even better still is that Jerry Reinsdorf was the guy Bettman was pushing as the guy who would get the sweetheart deal even though his plan was to fire Gretzky and move the team to Las Vegas in two years.

That makes me wonder if Bettman refers to Reinsdorf as "Boots" just out of habit. You know, since Boots Del Biaggio's whole plan with the Predators was to supposedly move them to Kansas City yet Bettman was completely unaware of all this.

What a joke.

Bettman's Cloak and Dagger in the Desert

It's quite amazing what this hurricane of scheisse that is the Phoenix Coyotes and Jim Balsillie Dance has done for the appearance of Gary Bettman the commissioner.

To the folks in Canada, he solidifies his position as the most hated man in the country by continuing to apparently deny Canada their seventh professional hockey team. Never mind that 15 years ago Canada used to have eight, that's beside the point here. Canada wants to bring a seventh team back "home" and Jim Balsillie is their cult leader at the helm.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not against Canada getting another team or two - I want it to happen and I want it to happen badly. My issue is with Jim Balsillie going about things the absolute wrong way to make it happen. That's all. I think Jim Balsillie would be the most fun owner to join the "club" in a long, long time and would help draw more attention to the league and for good reasons.

I maintained a couple of weeks ago when this story broke that there was something really wrong with how things broke down with the situation in Phoenix and while onwer Jerry Moyes being desperate to get out of owning an NHL team that's bleeding money is part of that and Jim Balsillie looking to grossly overpay for a team and move them back to his home is key here, there are other parts to this story that aren't getting the airtime or notice and guess who that all falls on?

That's right: Herr Bettman.

Who am I not going to take issue with here are the folks in Phoenix who are the tried and true fans of this team and are caught in the middle of this mess like kids in a divorce settlement. There's only one way the kids really win out here and that's if their parents can reconcile and get a solution worked out and that doesn't appear to be on the horizon.

After all, when you're a fan in this situation you're completely helpless and you have to hope that a solution that works well for you can be had. Let's face it, this is an ugly and dire situation in Phoenix and a team that loses this much money isn't marketable to other owners in it's current location and a solution to make money has to be found to be able to pawn it off to some other sucker, I mean owner.

What sucks about this situation for the fans in Phoenix is that their hero is also the guy looking to save his own skin and why he's operating a sick sort of cloak and dagger operation.


80s movie reference so deep Dennis Miller is at a loss for words.

Leave it to Gary Bettman to play the part of the parent who bad-mouths the other parent to the kids to show how much he loves them while saying things to his attorney (PDF), in this case Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, that contradict those sentiments completely.

It would figure that Bettman would manage to find a way to drag fans that had their team run away from them as part of the Great Southern NHL Manifest Destiny and get them all excited all over again all in a means to save his own skin while chapping the ass of the guy that's looking to fork over nearly $100 million dollars more than what's being asked of others for a team that's been losing $30-$40 million a year.

It would also make sense that Bettman would make sure to keep it a big secret that the NHL has been in control of the Coyotes since November 2008 while it sniffed around to find other potential owners of the club.

Meanwhile, in this story from AZCentral.com dated April 29th, the Coyotes denied that the NHL was in control and that everything else was just fine. Well who in the world would ask them to stay hush-hush about this because it might hurt the prospect of finding new buyers for the team?

Oh, right.

Look at this quote, it's amazing considering that it would just be days later the truth would be revealed.

Coyotes President Doug Moss refuted that report late Wednesday night, saying the league has not assumed control of the Coyotes.

"We are not reporting to the league," he said. "We report to (owner) Jerry Moyes. I'm dealing with things in my area, the business side, and Donnie (General Manager Don Maloney) is dealing with the hockey side.

"It's business as usual. He's preparing for the draft. I'm preparing for next year on marketing and sales."

This is stunning that a team could just spin the tires in the mud like this. This portrays the Coyotes management acting like the Wizard of Oz after they've looked behind the curtain.

This means that since November, since the second month of the season, the NHL has been pulling the strings of the Coyotes, a team that wasn't fully out of the playoff hunt until there was about a month left to go in the season, you know, around the trade deadline when Phoenix started lopping off valuable baubles like Olli Jokinen and Derek Morris.

The catch here is that Coyotes GM Don Maloney isn't a sham of a general manager and was able to get a nice return or else everyone's red flags would be waving all over the place, especially after how well Olli Jokinen and Derek Morris worked out for the Flames and Rangers respectively. It still doesn't sit well with me that a team that was still within a distant shot of the final playoff spot decided to pack it in rather than empty both barrels and go for the playoffs.

It's all water under the bridge now and Phoenix will help load the youth coffers in the draft yet again, something that a smart and wealthy person will recognize with the Coyotes. Something that one disturbingly wealthy Canadian has already recognized and is willing to throw money at anything possible to bring his team home.

If I'm on the board of governors and I've got some wild-eyed Canadian crazy man who is busy sponsoring just about everything that he can on the United States network that covers the NHL (that being NBC) and even starting up websites like Make It Seven to serve as the PR mouth of his operation... Isn't that the kind of attention-getting guy you want to have on your side rather than working against you?

Instead, the NHL chooses to look at Balsillie as an enemy combatant looking to horn in on their Good Time Fun Club any way that he can. Balsillie thinks that money can buy his way in and the owners tell him to get lost, meanwhile Bettman operates behind the scenes to try and play the role as Savior of the Coyotes meanwhile coming up with a contingency plan that finds a way to stick it to Balsillie and still find no one interested in buying the team to even move them to Winnipeg or Kansas City or anywhere else.

Well, maybe Jerry Bruckheimer can be convinced to bring them to Las Vegas for that other AEG tie-in, but that's just an even goofier side-plot.

Is this really how things operate in the big grown-up world of professional sports? Amazing.

What's hilarious here is how the public relations game played itself out from the get-go. Balsillie rides in to save the day for Jerry Moyes and his failing and bankrupt empire and Balsillie is set to ride off to Canada.

Meanwhile Bettman and gang step in to say that's not going to happen (and legally that's absolutely correct) and rather than be completely upfront about the situation in Phoenix all along, the league says all is well and that everyone will stay the same. And yet, all along, Bettman is searching around for someone to swoop in for the save (namely Jerry Reinsdorf) and keep the team in Phoenix so he doesn't suffer an epic PR hit for taking a team out of Canada and moving them to the desert where they ultimately failed and then had to tuck tail, literally, to move back to Canada.

Got all that? I'm sure there's a run-on sentence in there somewhere.

Unreal. No one is being truthful, at least no one was before all of this shit was thrown into the fan, and now that attention has been turned to the entire fiasco the scramble is on to save face and make sure no one is turned off to the NHL... at least in Phoenix.

Canada? Yeah, well, they're the ace in the hole Gary can count on. Canadians love hockey no matter what and they're not going to give up on the game. He can suffer the PR hits in Canada all he wants because he knows that Canadian fans aren't going anywhere and that they'll stick to the NHL for life. For fans in Winnipeg, Manitoba or Hamilton, Ontario they're going to be watching the Maple Leafs or Flames or Oilers every Saturday night on CBC and all season long on TSN whether there's a team in their backyard or not.

The Canadian NHL Fan is the closest thing Bettman has to a sure thing in his operation, they are his easy money. Getting more money out of Canadians by putting another franchise there doesn't excite him, especially if it means a team playing in an arena that doesn't pass the sniff test (like Copps Coliseum in Hamilton) or one that doesn't hold as many folks as they'd ideally like to see (MTS Centre in Winnipeg).

What can't Bettman afford to do? He can't afford to do what David Stern did so egregiously with the Seattle Super Sonics and just pick up stakes and move to an out-of-the-way place like Oklahoma City all while giving Seattle the finger and lecturing them about how to cave into the NBAs demands.

After all, we're not talking about the Coyotes demanding a new arena they've got that in Glendale with Jobing.com Arena. We're talking about a team that is bleeding money in a market that, media-wise, didn't give a damn about the Coyotes until they were about to run out of town and leave a hulking monument to failure in their backyard.

Bettman and the NHL can't afford (literally and figuratively) to have an empty year-round Jobing.com Arena stand as their legacy and run out of town screaming leaving one of the United States largest cities franchise-free with any and all of the fans they had left behind pissed off and hating the NHL forever. This isn't the kind of situation that happened when the Cardinals of the NFL left St. Louis for Arizona only to have the Rams move from Los Angeles to St. Louis later on.


If the NHL leaves Phoenix, this is what they'll be doing: Not just burning the bridge down, but blowing it up.

There may be a lot of fans in Phoenix and surrounding cities that love hockey, but they will never trust nor care about the NHL ever again should they leave town and every bridge out of town would be exploded and set ablaze to never come back to again. Phoenix would be Gary Bettman's failed experiment in expanding the NHL to new and unthinkable locations.

This is what is at stake here for the NHL and the fans in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Glendale are all caught in the middle. Bettman's e-mail to Bill Daly expressing his thoughts of going back to Winnipeg are a sign of fear.

After all, if things cannot be sustained or saved in Phoenix you might as well bring the team back home before exploring something new and different in Canada and deal with the legal wrangling that would have to take place with the Maple Leafs and Sabres not to mention potentially screwing Jim Balsillie out of his wishes to join the ownership club.

If Bettman were to take the Coyotes back to Winnipeg, he's viewed as a hero and a humbled one for righting a wrong and bringing a team back to Canada and back to a place that once had a much beloved franchise. If things are saved in Phoenix, then it's all status quo and the financial eye just locks in on the Coyotes even more for the time being and the new owners that come in get to play the part of saviors all at Gary's urging.

The only thing that will stay constant in all this is that Jim Balsillie will not be the knight in shining armor for southern Ontario because that's the side in all this that everyone wants no part in...

Unless your name is Jerry Moyes and there's $215 million at stake in the matter for you.

Something Rotten In The State of Arizona

Tell me where we've heard this one before.

Team in a non-traditional hockey market is in financial trouble.

A whimsical super-rich maven from southern Ontario wants to grossly and disturbingly overpay for the team and move them to his home, back in Gary's Hate Zone in Ontario, Canada.

Not sure where you read about this before?

It was right freakin' here.

It's like Jim Balsillie wants to keep me busy writing because after going after the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators and now he's hot after the Phoenix Coyotes.

Why the Coyotes? Because their owner Jerry Moyes has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"Extensive efforts have been undertaken to sell the team, or attract additional investors, who would keep the team in Glendale," said Coyotes' Chief Executive Officer and Managing Member Jerry Moyes.

"Creating a process under the supervision of a judge assures that anyone wishing to purchase the team will have the opportunity to bid. Likewise, the City of Glendale, which has been very cooperative with efforts to keep the team in Glendale, will be able to provide potential buyers assurances of the City's willingness to offer incentives to keep the team as a tenant in the Jobing.com arena, the lease for which is subject to rejection in bankruptcy," Moyes stated.

"The process assures that the identities of the new owner and the team's location will be known by June 30, 2009, thus enabling the NHL to include the team in its 2009-10 schedule."

Cutting things awfully close, aren't we Jerry?

Then there's the... Let's call it "timeliness" of Balsillie's offer to buy the Coyotes.

This evening myself, as well as other NHL bloggers, received an e-mail from the Managing Director of causeacommotion.com, letting us in about the efforts to help get the word out about Mr. Balsillie's bid to buy the Coyotes and their urge to get folks to get connected at their website Make It Seven, a nod for the push to get a seventh NHL team to come to Canada.

From the official press release put out by the Make It Seven:

Jim Balsillie tabled an offer today to purchase the PhoenixCoyotes, following the team's bankruptcy filing. The offer to purchase the team for $212.5 million (U.S.) is conditional on relocation to Southern Ontario, to become the seventh NHL franchise in Canada.

"The current team ownership asked that I table an offer to purchase the Coyotes and significant discussions resulted in an offer that is in the best interests of the franchise, the NHL, and the great hockey fans of Canada and Southern Ontario," Mr. Balsillie said.

"I am excited to move closer to bringing an NHL franchise to what I believe is one of the best un-served hockey markets in the world, Southern Ontario. A market with devoted hockey fans, a rich hockey history, a growing and diversified economy and a population of more than 7 million people," he said.

At the request of the Coyotes franchise owner, Mr. Balsillie has also agreed to post
debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing of $17 million (U.S.). Debtor in possession
financing is bridge financing provided when a company is in an insolvency proceeding which allows the company to continue to operate through the proceeding in advance of a restructuring or sale.

Prior to a final decision being reached on the proposed sale, he called for Canadian fans who want to see a seventh NHL franchise in Canada to make their voices heard.

Obviously, that's a nice hand-picked piece of PR cotton candy fluff and you can't expect me to eat it up.

So I'm not going to.


Balsillie's Blackberry Moving Company: I wonder if he's got a hook up with Swift Trucking?

There's something amiss here about how all of this just happened to blow up on the same night. It's probably not out of the realm of possibilities that Moyes and Balsillie have been working on a plan together that is mutually beneficial, something hinted upon here by James Mirtle.

It gets Moyes out of being an NHL owner with an obscene lease agreement with the city of Glendale, Arizona that agreed to build him a new arena and back fully into his trucking company, Swift Transportation.

It then gives Balsillie the open door to play the White Knight and save a financially addled team and bring them back to his home in Canada.

Sounds great, doesn't it? I know I sure thought so when Balsillie was doing this dance with the Predators before. The difference between then and now is that back then, it really seemed like he was doing the right thing.

This situation with Jerry Moyes and the Coyotes stinks to high hell and it's so obvious that there's something wrong here that even the NHL has declared shenanigans. From NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly:

We have just become aware of today's Bankruptcy Court filing purportedly made on behalf of the Phoenix Coyotes. We are investigating the circumstances surrounding the petition, including the propriety of its filing. We have removed Jerry Moyes from all positions of authority to act for or on behalf of the Club. The League will appear and proceed before the Bankruptcy Court in the best interests of all of the Club's constituencies, including its fans in Arizona and the League's 29 other Member Clubs.

You see that? Balsillie and Moyes served the NHL, the NHL served right back - now it's officially on.

The response to all this from blindsided Coyotes fans is not pleasant. There are too many posts to link over at Five For Howling, but I urge you to give it a look and a bookmark to keep tabs on this situation because over the next few weeks there's going to be a lot happening with this.

You would think that after going through this song and dance with the NHL and the Board of Governors twice already that Balsillie would have a better plan of attack and would actually, you know, really try to sweeten up to these old farts and curmudgeons and make them want to take his millions of dollars.

Instead (let me flex my geek muscles here) he's playing the part of Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back thinking that surprising the Board of Governors was the best way to go about getting his way.

Now's the part where I get to bust out with a Darth Vader comeback for Jim Balsillie, and it's tough for me to say this considering the guy is the inventor of the friggin' BlackBerry but: You're as clumsy as you are stupid.

Since the NHL has basically seized control of the Coyotes until the bankruptcy hearing on Thursday and depending on the outcome of that what we've got brewing here is a situation that makes folks recall the plight of the Montréal Expos in Major League Baseball.

Think about it. Shifty ownership making a brash move to get what they want, the league shuffles pieces around to make it work all the while taking control of a team while they search for a new owner.

Remember how that turned out? Yeah... not so well for Montréal.

So what is the end game here? Obviously for Balsillie it's to obtain the Coyotes and get them moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It always has been and it always will be his motive and he's obviously got the money to burn to pull it off... Just so long as he plays nice enough with the NHL to make it work - something he seems to either not know how to do or not want to do.

I always was quick to side with Balsillie and bought the whole push before about just wanting to do right by the game of hockey and bring a team back "home" to Canada. Now that he's teamed up with a shyster like Jerry Moyes to try and fast track a deal to get himself a team and run screaming away from a situation that while dire and God-freaking-awful with that wretched lease agreement

For Moyes it's to get out of owning the Coyotes and away from losing multiple millions of dollars in Glendale, Arizona under a lease agreement that won't allow him to just pick up and leave on his own. Between Balsillie and Moyes, Moyes comes across like the truest villain of the bunch as he's more than ready to just walk away from everything. Considering that the City of Glendale has more often than not helped him out, he doesn't seem to care about the team, the city and certainly not about the fans.

Keep on truckin' asshole.

As for the NHL and Gary Bettman... Saving face. That's always the trick with the league but this time they've been put in a bad place by Moyes and Balsillie alike and after seeing how things transpired this evening, the NHL has a pretty strong case on their hands to stuff it in Moyes' face hard that he's the guy that screwed this up. The catch there is that it still leaves the NHL on the hook with the team and figuring out what to do with the Coyotes and their overbearing lease agreement.

If the NHL and the City of Glendale can get a renegotiated lease agreement figured out, there's no reason why finding a more reasonable buyer for the team can't be found thus giving Moyes what he wants but still boning over Jim Balsillie.

Then again, perhaps Balsillie should've thought better about teaming up with Jerry Moyes to try and pull a fast one on everyone. I dig Balsillie, I dig his passion and I dig his love of hockey. I also like that he's a crazy bastard and would really be a great owner to have around to mess with Bettman.

What I can't believe is that a guy who is this good of a businessman with BlackBerry would be this obviously reckless in dealing with the NHL. It blows my mind that this guy could be this dumb about business and go for what amounts to be a hostile takeover of the Coyotes.

He has to know that if things are that out of hand with the ownership that the league would just step in and take over. He couldn't possibly think this was a coin flip deal where either the team goes bankrupt and folds or he steps in and plays the hero.

What Jim Balsillie apparently hasn't realized is that the professional sports world, especially the NHL, doesn't operate by the same rules and use the same handbook that the real world does and this is a lesson he's continuing to learn the very hard way. The highest bid doesn't always win in the NHL and hostile takeovers just don't happen.

The NHL operates in Bizarro World. Plain and simple and going by the executive world playbook is not going to get it done, especially when everyone else in the board room seems to hate your guts.