Comments on: Battles of the Sexes: The Phoenix Situation

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:45:16 +0000

Great debate, guys. Z4dfense makes completely valid points, ones that many people outside Phoenix tend to ignore when arguing the viability of the Coyotes in Arizona.

Mike’s opinion comes as no surprise, especially given he’s from Toronto. I remember similar comments he made during the Preds On The Glass podcast recently in hinting that hockey’s dead in Phoenix, but not quite like Howard Bloom of Sports Business News.

Nobody wants to listen that bad ownership, a losing team on the ice and a subpar business plan has put the Coyotes in their current situation. Those talking media heads that are opposed to the team playing in the Valley of the Sun will conveniently omit the franchise problems of the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers in the late 1990s or the bankruptcies of the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres being a result of lack of fans. The same in Pittsburgh. But those same naysayers think that because the Coyotes play in a warm-weather climate and it’s a non-traditional hockey market, they don’t have any reason to believe it’ll be successful. Dallas was handed an up-and-coming team in their lap in 1993 and look at how well they’ve done. Had the Coyotes been in that position and won like the Stars have, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.

By: david

david — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:02:29 +0000

Rusty – wouldn’t you say that the precedent was already established in the league? i.e.) California Golden Seals (76′) K.C. Scouts (76′), Cleveland Barons (78′), Atlanta Flames (80′), Colorado Rockies (82′), Minnesota North Stars (93′), Quebec Nordiques (95′), Winnipeg Jets (96′), Hartford Whalers (97′).

By: Mike_Fahmy

Mike_Fahmy — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:32:01 +0000

Well Katrina wins this no doubt and Rusty Phoenix has had 13 years to prove that they can survive and every year amongst those 13 years Phoenix has lost money every year and pretty teams like the Leafs and big market teams have had to help them out financially and bail them out. It clearly isn’t working out in Phoenix. Even a winning team isn’rt going to draw fans there. Look at Carolina they won the Cup in 06 and still no fans show up to their games.

By: Z4dfense

Z4dfense — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:10:08 +0000

I live here in PHO and have been a season ticket holder for 5 years… I have to question these 2 points (a $9 ticket price point, and have they even had free booze nights) the 9buck price is only available to STH *those tickets are 15bucks for regular joe blows… also to my knowledge there has never been a free booze night at the JobArena… Comerica Club ticket holders and possibly Toyota Club are the only ones that get free booze (its not really free cuz they pay thru the nose *upwards of 150 bucks per seat to get those ‘free’ drinks)

Fairweather fans are a fact of life, ask the Oil and the Sens and even Chicago. Win and those casuals and fairweathers show up in droves. The trick is to get them so hooked on the game that they become hard core fans over time.

IF our ownership had invested any ‘real’ money & time into the team we wouldn’t be in this mess. It wasn’t just Moyes who got us here. Under Don Maloney we are seeing a resurgence of superior hockey people who know the game, who know the business coming into play. Adding an experienced coach who can actually be held accountable for producing a winning product also makes a big difference.

13 years of ineptitude and skinflint ownership is not a solid trial period. If we are given a reprieve and get ownership that actually cares whether the team wins or loses, people will be singing a whole nother tune.. we’ll be compared to the Pens pulling themselves from the bottom of the BK heap to the top of the league and it won’t be fairweather fans… it’ll be fairweather media who jump onto our bandwagon then.