Scott Radley: Arizona Coyotes trapped in a little barn
The Arizona State University Sun Devils tweeted out a video of their new arena-under-construction the other day. The same rink that will also be home to the Arizona Coyotes for at least the next three or four seasons.
For a college team, it looks sweet.
For an NHL team? Embarrassing. Or humiliating. Or bush league. Or pathetic. Or sad. Or ridiculous. Take your pick, they all apply.
A roughly 5,000-seat barn - there appear to be a dozen rows of seats all the way around the ice - is more-than-acceptable for an NCAA team. In fact, for the kids who will play for ASU, it will be outstanding. But, for a professional franchise playing in one of what's always been considered one of the four major North American leagues? Absolutely ludicrous.
Why mention this? Oh, I think you know.
This is the franchise, remember, that the league fought so hard to keep in the desert rather than allowing a billionaire to move it to Hamilton. This is the organization the league decided would be better off scratching and clawing to survive rather than coming to the hockey hotbed of southern Ontario where it would be a sure thing.
Granted, the league couldn't know that someday this team would be pushed out of its home by a city council disinterested in continuing its relationship or predict it would land in a rink smaller than all but six Ontario Hockey League arenas. Not to mention, only about five times bigger than the intimate capacity of the Toronto Maple Leafs' practice facility.
Still, this is absurd on an epic level.
No, Hamilton wasn't a perfect scenario. There were challenges.
The proximity to Buffalo and Toronto would have complicated any deal. The age of FirstOntario Centre would have been an issue, though BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie vowed to fix it up. The local TV deal would have been tiny.
And BlackBerry isn't the same company it was. Around the time Balsillie was trying to acquire the Coyotes, the company's stock topped out at $146 a share. Today those shares are worth $7. Nobody knows how that might've affected the ownership.
That said, you can be darn sure whoever was owning it today wouldn't be talking about expanding the Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena or JL Grightmire in Dundas to host NHL games. And if they were, you can be sure the calendar would read April 1. Whatever the situation was here, it would've been vastly better than what's going on in Arizona.
And it's not just the rink itself.
The Coyotes have gone through owners - and potential owners - like Joey Chestnut goes through hotdogs. A thorough explanation of the ownership history of the franchise would require flow charts, graphs and perhaps a dramatic re-enactment. This is a franchise that has never been anything but a hot mess.
That said, there has been continuity in one department. The losing.
This is the Coyotes' 25th season. They've missed the playoffs in 16 of those (we're including this year since they're currently dead last in the league). When they've managed to appear in the post-season, they've been dispatched before you even noticed they were there. Only three times have they won a series.
Their attendance is always within the bottom two or three. The city and the NHL have had to cover bills at different times. They've gone bankrupt. You can go on their website and buy a ticket for an upcoming game for just $21. Their plans for a permanent home in Tempe aren't even a sure thing.
And now they're going to be playing in a preposterously tiny building for three years at least.
Back in 2009 when Balsillie was fighting for the team, the NHL could have had steak, instead it chose gristle. It could have had an Oscar, instead it chose a Razzie. It could have been filling a real arena in a hockey hotbed, instead it's going to be playing in front of family and friends as the laughingstock of pro sports.
It's hard not to smirk just a little bit.
Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com