Several factors have contributed to the Coyotes' failure to build any ties in Glendale.
GLENDALE, ARIZ. -- On a night like this, you can see what Gary Bettman sees.
The Westgate City Center, that fabulous entertainment district that bumps up against the Phoenix Coyotes area, is humming with people. A band is playing Johnny Cash covers, the sun is going down and the temperature has settled at about 23 Celsius.
In about 90 minutes, Jobing.com Arena will swell with 17,314 people -- actual Arizonans, most of them -- selling out their rink to watch their National Hockey League team, perhaps for the final time.
"It will not be the last night. Win, lose or draw, it will not be the last night," said season ticket holder Joe Caruso, sporting a Daniel Boone hat made out of an actual coyote's head, tail and fur.
Alas, there hasn't been a mangier, hairier NHL ownership story in years: Will the Coyotes stay here in Glendale, or will they open the 2011-12 season in Winnipeg, the city they fled in 1996?
Prospective buyer Matthew Hulsizer was at the arena Wednesday for Game 4 of the Coyotes’ Western Conference quarter-final against the mighty Detroit Red Wings. A meeting between the City of Glendale and that pesky Goldwater Institute -- the third-party, taxpayer watch dog group that has stood in the way of the sale to Hulsizer -- is set for Thursday afternoon.
A team that can't draw played in front of a sold out building for both playoff games. The NHL is in Year 2 of paying the bills to prolong a franchise that has never turned a profit since moving south.
Does any of this make sense?
"I don't know what went wrong," said Don Hay, the original head coach of the Coyotes, back when they were a tenant in the Phoenix Suns' America West Arena in downtown Phoenix. "They definitely needed a new rink. We were in the basketball rink downtown, the one end wasn't suited for hockey. They had to look for a new rink."
It was the fatal misstep however, when ownership opted for the free area way out here in the ‘burbs, rather than spending some of its own money to finance an arena in Scottsdale, closer to its prospective customers.
"There was a lot of excitement downtown," Hay said. "They were building the baseball stadium, there was a lot of excitement around the basketball team.
"Ottawa has the rink out in Kanata," Hay said. "I guess it's how passionate the fans are for hockey. How bad they want to go to the game. Other cities have rinks on outskirts, they find a way to fill those buildings.
This isn't Ottawa, however.
"It's like bringing cricket into Edmonton," Hay quipped. "I don't know how much passion you can have for a sport you never grew up around."
Add up a rink built too far away, some poor management during the Wayne Gretzky years, lengthy bankruptcy proceedings, and the sum total is a team that hasn't built enough ties to be situated way out here.
They draw fine in the playoffs, but doesn't everybody? What's killing the Coyotes are all those Tuesdays in November through March, when Anaheim or Minnesota is in town.
"We don't get the draw like Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal," Caruso said over the music in the plaza. "That's because everybody here is from somewhere else. They have their allegiance to someone else, and then they have the Coyotes.
"But if they win, people will come."
Alas, there was no win on Wednesday night at Jobing.com for Coyotes fans.
Late in a 3-3 tong war with the Red Wings, in a series the ‘Yotes trailed three games to none, shaky goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov let in a prayer from the corner off the stick of Dan Cleary. Another cheap goal, an empty netter, and the Red Wigs swept Phoenix out of the playoffs with a 6-3 win Wednesday night.
"Goalies have two ways to be," the Coyotes goaltender said after the game. "To be a hero, to be a goat. I am goat."
After the game, the Coyotes players gathered at centre ice to salute their fans. The people chanted "Let's go, Coyotes!" but truly, the emotion was nothing like the night in '96 when the Winnipeg Jets were defeated -- also by Detroit -- in their final game at the Winnipeg Arena.
"It's been an interesting two years, that's for sure … what we've had to deal with for the last two years here," captain Shane Doan said. "I've never been swept four straight. That's embarrassing."
And if this was his last game in Phoenix?
"This has become my home," he said. "Everyone knows my feelings on this by now.
"If it is, you deal with it."
