Judge Baum avoided making a real ruling on the Coyotes after several failed attempts to push the NHL and Jim Balsillie towards mediation.

I won't dwell on what you already know.

You know that because of a ruling Monday night, as of today the Phoenix Coyotes are not coming to Hamilton right away and, by the laws of probability, it would appear no new team is coming to Canada for the 2009-10 season.

A bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Redford T. Baum, has seen to that.

Does that mean Jim Balsillie's bid to "Make it Seven" is dead?

Not according to the Balsillie camp.

Tuesday morning in a somewhat stunning press conference designed to reinforce the argument that Balsillie's bid to bring a team into Southern Ontario is very much alive, Richard Rodier, Balsillie's lead attorney on the matter, gave a calm, reasoned and eminently believable argument that Judge Baum's Monday ruling -- a ruling universally reported as the end of the line for Balsillie's Phoenix bid -- is not over.

Not by a long shot, slapper or otherwise.

Rodier argued that as long as the judge still has some say over the bankruptcy petition (and he does) and as long as Balsillie still has a bid in and a relocation request before the NHL (and he does), the Balsillie group still has the only offer on the table. He also said the judge has encouraged them to stay involved in the process and they likely will do so.

"It's difficult to speculate as to what happens in a bankruptcy proceeding," Rodier said, "but the nature of bankruptcy is that it can be a long process or a short process but (in this case) you still have a team that is in bankrupt and still has to be sold in a process to be administered by Judge Baum."

Rodier then speculated that the next step seems to be that they (the NHL) will be looking for a local buyer and that Sept. 10 might be a new deadline and that in a bankruptcy proceeding things can "come out of left field."

"Our offer is still on the table," Rodier said. "You still have a team that needs to be sold and creditors that need to be satisfied and they are owed a LOT (emphasis Rodier's) of money.

"The National Hockey League still has a lot to do," he continued. "They still have to find someone to buy the team and you saw from declarations (in court) that the team does not work in Glendale (a suburb of Phoenix) without a massive, massive subsidy from Glendale."

Rodier said that a subsidy is something that taxpayers have indicated they do not want to pay and that even if they did it may well be illegal. He estimated that subsidy to be near $20 million a year and if that money does not appear -- an event he likened to "receiving manna from heaven" -- the taxpayers will be on the hook."

Rodier and his press conference mate, Bill Walker, the Balsillie group's director for media relations, also made certain to state and restate that Balsillie has no intention of backing down in his quest to both obtain the Coyotes and move them into Copps Coliseum in Hamilton and Rodier stated unequivocally that "at the end of this process I believe the Phoenix Coyotes are going to end up in Hamilton."

I believe he is telling the truth. What he's not telling you is how improbable it all seems to anyone who's followed this case from its roots in Pittsburgh, a stopover in Nashville and now a bruising and personally vicious battle between Balsillie and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in Phoenix. But then both Rodier and Balsillie have always believed they have a great chance of meeting their stated goal just as Bettman as often stated he expects to find a buyer and keep the team in the Glendale Arena.

The view from here is that they all intend to keep up the fight even though Judge Baum appears to have turtled.

Both Rodier and Walker went to great lengths not to give that impression but it seems for all the world that Judge Baum, faced yet again with having to make a real decision, went down and covered up like Claude Lemieux at the Joe Louis Arena.

The judge was asked to do one thing: make a ruling on a bankruptcy petition that would have paid off virtually all the secured creditors of the Phoenix Coyotes. He was presented with an option that said in order to make that happen he needed to allow Balsillie to move it to Hamilton.

Now it wouldn't be an easy thing to do for a variety of well-documented reasons. In accepting Balsillie's bid to buy and relocate the Coyotes to Southern Ontario, the judge would be opening the door to a host of legal second-guessing regarding the scope of his jurisdictional ability. He also would be setting the stage for a court fight for the ages regarding anti-trust regulations as they apply to pro sports in both the United States and Canada. He would have left the city of Glendale holding the bag on some debt and a white elephant of a building, an embarrassment to city officials of such monumental proportions that it surely would have cost some elected officials to lose their posts.

Yet after weeks of trying and failing to steer Balsillie and the NHL to a decision that would absolve him of making a ruling, he simply bailed.

Say what you want regarding the NHL claiming victory and the Balsillie camp arguing the fight goes on. Say what you will on which side is right in this dispute (the league, the Balsillie camp or none of the above), but both parties went into court to plead their case and ask for a legal decision and what did the judge do: he said there "wasn't time."

Wasn't time? Chrysler has entered bankruptcy, passed through it and today is opening up a shuttered plant under new ownership with Fiat in only slightly more time than Judge Baum has been massaging this case. General Motors filed, restructured deals with its unions, its shareholders and the federal governments of two nations in almost the same amount of time and is already inundating us with commercials introducing the "new" GM, a company that has put its failed past behind it and is introducing us to the concepts of reinvention and reinnovation.

Heck, even the NHL, notorious for dragging its feet, has steered the Penguins, the Buffalo Sabres, the Los Angeles Kings and the Ottawa Senators through bankruptcy without ever missing even a preseason game. True the teams didn't have to move, but then one need only look at the Quebec Avalanche, Winnipeg Coyotes, Minnesota Stars, Kansas City Rocky Devils, Atlanta Flames and California Golden Clevelanders nee Minnesota Mergers to understand that backing up a moving van and carting off an NHL franchise to a new city can be done faster than you can say Carolina Hurricanes.

But not Judge Baum.

The judge simply covered up like Tuomo Ruutu.

He dismissed yet another drop-dead date and, in essence, avoided a real ruling as he once again tried to drive both sides toward mediation.

A week ago this guy was boasting that the Balsillie group had the only viable offer on the table and chastised the NHL for bring "expressions of interest" in buying the Coyotes, expressions he labeled as "hearsay" and castigated the NHL lawyers for even bringing them into his courtroom.

A week later he's saying: "Simply put the court does not think there is sufficient time for all these issues to be fairly presented." He also said that "unresolved issues" such as relocation and price of same "couldn't be resolved" by a late June deadline.

No kidding Sean Avery, that's why they went to see a judge. You were supposed to deal with a complex issue that the warring parties could not. Had you not delayed, for weeks, the parameters set forth in the original Balsillie-Jerry Moyes bankruptcy petition could have been decided in a reasonable time frame. It would have taken courage and a willingness to set the boundaries of a bankruptcy court that may or may not have been reversed on an appeal, but at least there would have been a decision. The judge was asked, quite simply, to apply the rule of bankruptcy law which, according to numerous bankruptcy attorneys we spoke to said was largely an open and shut case.

He didn't do that.

Instead, he brought a sense of non-judgment to the proceedings that brought back memories of Judge Lance Ito and the O.J. Simpson trial. He said the Balsillie group should have been more inclusive, telling the league it was going to go into court with Moyes and that Balsillie should have told the league of his intentions to relocate to Southern Ontario and even suggest a price he would be willing to pay for the privilege.

Pardon us for being a tad incredulous, Judge, but isn't that the kind of lecturing we get from those who told us Mario Lemieux needed to pull a certain team's sweater over his head or that Eric Lindros needed to go sit with the Quebec Nordiques' brass.

Weren't we looking for a little bit more than that?

The Balsillie group Tuesday managed to put a good spin on all of this. Knowing that it is still Judge Baum standing between them and their goal, they made all nice about what a good judge he is and how he's trying to do the right thing. That's the right thing to do when a judge invites you to resubmit a motion. They said the judge's ruling was an "interim" ruling, making it sound like it was just Ottawa general manager Bryan Murray hiring another coach. They said they are still open to mediation and one has to believe they said all that because that's what the judge wants.

Left unsaid was that the judge still hasn't ruled on their petition and one gets the sense that he may never do so unless one side or the other forces his hand.

And so Rodier was correct in saying that their motion for a ruling by June 29 is dead, but so is the NHL's motion for a ruling on Moyes’ right to put the team into bankruptcy.

And until Judge Baum rules as to whether or not the Coyotes can be sold to Jim Balsillie and moved to Hamilton, it appears it will.

The fight goes on, but with this judge it's fair to wonder when or even if it will ever end.