Coyotes' owner Jerry Moyes AP Photo/Rss D. Franklin
Jerry Moyes bought the Phoenix Coyotes in 2001, since then the team has lost 30 million dollars a season on average. In that time the team has won 40 games in a season only once and has an overall Win-Loss record during his ownership tenure of 236-259.
Is there any wonder why this team can only draw an average home crowd of 14 thousand?
Hockey fans in a traditional NHL market will not show up to watch bad hockey, and fans with other attractive options in a warm weather climate surely won’t and haven’t.
Now there is news that Moyes signed over control of his team to the NHL itself way back in November. Under that agreement the NHL is staffing that the leauge had Moyes signs documents forbidding him from taking the Coyotes into bankruptcy.
The league has now filed a motion to have that Bankruptcy filing thrown out of court. Deputy NHL Commissioner Bill Daly stated, “We are filing a motion basically asking the judge to confirm that the league is in control of the club, and at this point we’ll be able to dismiss all the claims in bankruptcy.”
It now appears that Moyes made an underhanded deal with Canadian business man Jim Balsillie. Under that deal Balsillie bid some 217 million dollars to purchase the club, and supplied Moyes with 17 million dollars to help fund his bankruptcy filing.
The leauge seems to be positioning itself to kill that sale, remove Moyes from any ownership decisions, and in turn sour the efforts of Balsillie to buy an NHL club. For the Canadian this will be the third failure to purchase an NHL franchise.
NHL commissioner Gary Betteman had this to say on the subject of Balsillie ownership efforts, “That's actually an issue that I don't get a vote on, the board of governors does. But, in the past, selling tickets in a place where we don't have a franchise for a franchise he didn't own, interaction he's had with a variety of our owners, I don't know whether or not he could get approved. But that's as I said something I don't get a vote on. If in fact it becomes an issue for board consideration, the board of governors of the league will make that decision.”
It seems that this underhanded attempt to purchase the Coyotes, and the fact that having another high revenue club placed in Southern Ontario would all but guarantee a bump in the salary cap and salary floor, will all but guarantee a rejection by the NHL’s Board of Governor’s of Balsillie as an NHL owner.
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