Quote:
Originally Posted by Parallex
Frankly, if I can be totally honest, it looks like just another excuse in a long line of excuses to me. Phoenix doesn't make enough money... "Oh, it'll just take little time for hockey to catch on you'll see!" They're around for a while and still don't make enough money "oh it's because the arena isn't any good! get a new arena and you'll see!" They get a new arena and they still don't make money... "Oh, it's because the team is always losing get a team that wins some and you'll see!"... team starts winning and they still don't make enough money... "Oh it's because of ownership turmoil, get a stable ownership group and you'll see!"
At this point I just don't think enough people in the Metro Phoenix area support or will shortly support hockey enough to make it a viable enterprise. Really I think the NHL would be better off moving the team now and really work on building the game of hockey in Arizona at the grassroots (Youth League, High School, College, minor pro) level before trying to put a team there again.
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Go grassroots or go home!
That isn't a very catchy saying... still, I think that is the message that Bettman needs to take if the NHL pulls out of Phoenix. A lot of money was lost on the brute force approach of trying to force that franchise into a market that simply didn't care. If Bettman really wants to set up the NHL to be able to return to Phoenix in the future then investing the money in the grass roots concept should help prevent the annual $30M in losses the Coyotes were seeing on a regular basis.