COYOTES UGLY
NHL finally should admit Phoenix mistake and move team
MAYBE there is a binding agreement in place that will keep the Coyotes in place for another year or three in Glendale, Ariz., and maybe there isn’t. Courts of law will decide the issue. As customary in Gary Bettman’s regime, league and ad hoc attorneys will be in for a windfall. Attorneys, by the way, whose fees aren’t capped and who pay no escrow.
But there is no reason other than the NHL’s institutional ego to maintain the franchise in Glendale that has been a money pit and source of unending drama essentially from its inception after yanking the Original Jets out of Winnipeg in 1996.
It’s been a twodecade soap opera replete with one inadequately financed owner after another, seasons apart in which the team was a ward of the state — was it 19992000 or 200001, I’m not sure now, during which the Rangers were prevented from trading for Nikolai Khabibulin and Keith Tkachuk because the Coyotes’ assets were frozen by Sixth Avenue? — and a series of unending court battles during which almost everyone connected with the franchise has been bled dry.
That includes the unfortunate folks of Glendale, whose elected representatives have thrown millions at pro sports owners and leagues in order to have Dodgers and White Sox exhibition baseball and to keep an NHL team that exists on the public dole and as a perpetual league welfare recipient in the form of revenue sharing.
The NHL is all but certainly going to expand and realign in either 201617 or 201718. Las Vegas is in. The question now is whether the NHL hierarchy will stop taking Arizona so personally and accede to both common sense and business sense by moving the Coyotes out of the desert to either Seattle or Quebec … unless the latter is reserved for Carolina, the next existing bull’seye for trouble on the league map.
But the league’s business sense generally can be defined in a capsule as “cap the players.” As long as the town of Glendale keeps paying its $15 million to the franchise, as long as the players contribute their growing escrow withholding to keep the franchise afloat, common sense is likely to come in exactly where the Coyotes do every season.
Out of the money. Following the Keith
Yandle deal, we’re told there was a brief followup conversation between the Rangers and Coyotes about
Shane Doan that went nowhere fast, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be resurrected this summer.
Doan, a charter member of the Coyotes who broke into the NHL with the Original Jets in 199596, will be 39 in early October, put up his poorest numbers (14, 22 = 36) since his third season, and has one more year on his contract at $5.25 million.
But he is a grinder, the Rangers tried hard to sign him when he became a free agent in 2012, and when
Glen Sather wants someone, the itch as often as not is eventually scratched.
We’re not suggesting Doan is coming to New York, only that it’s something to be stored in the back of your collective consciousness.
Ah, Sather. As the GM contemplates his immediate future, all signals are that it will be status quo for the Rangers’ management structure at least through the draft into the July 1 opening of the freeagent market.
Sather traditionally addresses the media on the second day of the draft, so perhaps this time in addition to a “State of the Rangers” we’ll get a “State of Slats.”
The safest bet going into the June 2627 draft weekend is the Blueshirts will indeed trade Cam Tal
bot. Several wellplaced sources report there is a “significant” amount of interest in the soontobe 28yearold goaltender, with inquiries not confined to clubs seeking a No. 1, but from some as well looking for a backup.
The Rangers are seeking to maximize the return in draft picks for the netminder, who was the team’s most valuable player the second half of the season during Henrik Lundqvist’s extended absence.
Dan Boyle, we’re told by a reliable informant, is neither going to retire nor request a trade. Indeed, the defenseman with the no move clause who will turn 39 in just under a month is eager to return for his second season with the Rangers, for whom he played his best hockey in the conference finals against Tampa Bay.
Meanwhile, it also can be pretty much etched in stone that if Martin St.
Louis chooses to continue his career, it will not be in New York, with both sides prepared to move on.
It is unknown whether the winger, who will turn 40 on Thursday and who has used outside doubts as fuel to generate a slamdunk Hall of Fame career, will seek
employment elsewhere. Maybe Montreal?
The Devils rebuild will include 39yearold Patrik
Elias, who, we’re told, has not been asked by GM Ray
Shero to waive his nomove clause and who has no inclination whatsoever to leave the franchise with which he has built a Hall of Fame career beginning with his December 1995 debut.
Before everyone gets carried away with the
Brandon Saad offer sheet scenario, understand that 16 teams — including Pittsburgh, Boston, Colorado, L.A., Dallas, Detroit, San Jose, St. Louis and Vancouver — already have disqualified themselves by trading away 2016 draft selections required as compensation for a player of the Chicago winger’s projected paygrade. Defensemen Duncan
Keith of the Blackhawks and Victor Hedman of the Lightning have been the two best players in the Cup final and, prior to Saturday’s Game 5, easily the leading Conn Smythe contenders.
Interestingly, all eight defensemen to have won the Smythe — Scott Nieder
mayer, Nick Lidstrom, Brian Leetch, Scott Stevens, Al MacInnis, Larry Robinson, Bobby Orr,
Serge Savard — have been elected to the Hall of Fame.
Should we point out again that the primary reason the Blackhawks have been able to construct this extended run of excellence is because of the nowoutlawed, frontloaded contracts to which they signed Keith (13 years, $72M) and
Marian Hossa (12/$63.3M) under the old CBA?
But those were deals not good for hockey.
And having a franchise in Glendale is.