Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
NHL peppers Glendale with power play over Phoenix Coyotes
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/coyo...x-coyotes.html
“What they were saying is that they’ve brought us their candidate,” Glendale city councilman Gary Sherwood said. “And it’s up to us to come up with an arena management deal, period.”
“If we’re not closer than we are now, they said we’ll have to look at it for what it is, and admit this just isn’t working,” Sherwood said.
For Sherwood, that makes Tuesday’s scheduled council meeting extremely important. But there’s a new pipe dream to consider, a mystery candidate that Sherwood would not reveal, one with a lot of cash and better terms for his city.
The mystery buyer told Sherwood he’d have his bid together by Friday. It sounded too good to be true.
I’ll pause while you roll your eyes.
“But that’s part of the problem,” Sherwood said. “There are other groups lurking that the NHL hasn’t brought to us. They have their one candidate. And the way I look at it is, maybe Renaissance (Sports and Entertainment) is the best for the NHL, but maybe only second- or third-best for Glendale.”
Another source said the mystery buyer is real and would bring real money to the table. Renaissance’s deal is heavy on loans, short on equity, and no person has more than a $10 million stake in the game. They want an out clause after four to five years, creating fears that they conceivably could run the team into the ground and bail.
Yet the city council needs to decide in the next two weeks.
“And I’m not sure if we have four votes yet,” Sherwood said.
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Two things:
1) My first thought was that the city is now creating a non-existent candidate, or over stating the strength of one, in an attempt to gain some leverage here.
2) The part about fears of the team being run into the ground makes me wonder who on the Coyotes would take on the role of Wild Thing in the inevitable Major League style run to the Cup