Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

PEBBLE BEACH -- There is a tenet of business that says doing the right thing wrong is still smarter than doing the wrong thing right.

Apply that to the Phoenix Coyotes situation, and even a sportswriter who was never fooled by Jim Balsillie has to admit that moving the Coyotes to Canada is the right thing to do. Balsillie simply approached it the wrong way.

As for the Ice Edge group, who have an agreement in principle to purchase the hammer with which to pound a square peg into a round hole down in Arizona for another 26 years, we respectfully submit that they are doing the wrong thing. Even if they are doing it the right way.

"Ultimately, we believe that hockey will work in Arizona," Ice Edge CEO Anthony LeBlanc told us Monday morning.

And that makes one of him.

"But we do understand that it's a franchise in disarray. A team that needs to find its sea legs."

Please, don't misconstrue this column as a knock on the Ice Edge people, a group of seven that includes three Canadians. We give the NHL credit for not simply walking away from Phoenix, and in the spirit of true entrepreneurship, these Ice Edge guys have some serious cojones to take on a franchise with as many problems as the Coyotes have.

For one -- providing they can wrangle some additional revenue streams out of the City of Glendale at Jobing.com Arena -- Ice Edge is willing to do the unthinkable: adopt the current term of 26 years with no escape clause.

You can't be serious ...

"Absolutely," LeBlanc said.

We must have asked him four times if we were missing something; if there wasn't going to be some language that would allow the group to move the team if the unmitigated disaster that is the NHL in Phoenix can not be righted.

"No. Nothing," he said. And you could hear an edge growing in his voice. "We're not going into business expecting to fail. Why not expect that you're going to be successful?

"My partners are Wall St. people. They are very analytical. Over the past six months we've delved into the books of the Phoenix Coyotes, and the books of other National Hockey League franchises.

"People think we're crazy? Call us crazy," he said. "We are certain the franchise will be (in the black) in three years."

Now, we caution you that all Ice Edge has is a letter of intent to buy the team. That's like a conditional offer on a house, and can be laden with "subject-to's."

And you can be sure that, if they are willing to accept the remaining 26 years on the arena lease, they will be asking for some major concessions when it comes to who gets what revenues out of the arena. Plus there is the matter of five dates per season to be played in Saskatoon, a city chosen ostensibly because it has no chance of ever getting a team full-time.

"We didn't want people in Phoenix thinking, 'Look, that's one foot out of the door," LeBlanc said.

Glendale will very likely play ball on the lease, but now they are losing five dates, a significant concession. They believe that lease to be rock solid, and now that the NHL is playing out of Jobing.com again -- and the team is out of bankruptcy -- Glendale may not feel so vulnerable that they are willing to tear up the lease for Ice Edge.

The first order of business at the NHL's board of governor meetings here is commissioner Gary Bettman's state-of-the-business address. The second is when he addresses the governors on franchise matters.

A high-ranking governor told sportsnet.ca that, with the league having won the franchise over Balsillie -- a foundation-rattling loss for the league, had it gone the other way -- he "expected absolutely no push-back on the Phoenix issue" from governors.

We were told on Friday that Bettman will report to the owners that, upon closing with Ice Edge, they will have recouped every dollar they spent owning, operating and bailing out the Coyotes. That may be a tad hopeful, considering the league paid $140 million in bankruptcy court for the team, and Ice Edge is reportedly paying the NHL the same amount. But anything relatively close is a huge win for the league.

If Ice Edge is willing or able to salvage Phoenix -- and we're still waiting for the bomb to drop on those lease negotiations -- then Bettman has held on to the fifth-largest market in the United States, at least for a few more years.

He has flattened the great Hun, Jim Balsillie, under the castle drawbridge, and thwarted any future Jerry Moyesian shenanigans by any future owners who may see bankruptcy as a way out of a poor market.

Somehow, this Coyotes story is wrapping up a little too smoothly for the NHL.

Stay tuned for the evening news. We surely will.