Coyotes lose vote for new arena - future unclear

[RUPERTKBD]

2 minutes ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Why do Leafs vs Vancouver games at Rogers Arena start at 4pm and not 7pm?

Because 10 pm is past Mitch Marner's bedtime....

[Ghostsof1915]

Just now, RUPERTKBD said:

Because 10 pm is past Mitch Marner's bedtime....

Besides that.

[Alflives]

Just now, RUPERTKBD said:

Because 10 pm is past Mitch Marner's bedtime....

By 10pm Marner is in his Tavares PJ’s. 

[DrJockitch]

Just now, Ghostsof1915 said:

Besides that.

$$$$$$$$$$

[DrJockitch]

Good for Tempe. They did the right thing. Not giving tax dollars to billion dollar corporations. 

[Ghostsof1915]

1 minute ago, DrJockitch said:

$$$$$$$$$$

Bingo.

[mll]

 

[PhillipBlunt]

2 minutes ago, mll said:

 

This team is an abject failure. 

[RUPERTKBD]

3 minutes ago, PhillipBlunt said:

This team is an abject failure. 

They need to change the logo:

 

[Ghostsof1915]

There's 16 teams in the East

16 teams in the West.

 

I'm not sure how more basic this needs to get. Detroit and Columbus will fight tooth and nail to stay out of the Western Conference.

You can't have 17 teams in the East and 15 in the West. The league is not interested in expansion.

As great as it would be to see the Nordiques again. It's not happening, for now. The Coyotes will move to a city somewhere in the West.

Now if Columbus or Florida started to have issues with attendance, then there's a possibility they could move one of those two.

But doubtful for both as Florida has a deep pocketed owner, as is Columbus with Worthington of Worthington Industries.

 

[MaxVerstappen33]

7 minutes ago, DrJockitch said:

Good for Tempe. They did the right thing. Not giving tax dollars to billion dollar corporations. 

The voting down of this deal is also a blessing in disguise for the NHL. One of the owners in the deal has been shown to be a snake. If that's who he was, who is his business partners? The financing of this whole deal was probably on shaky ground. The arena would probably get half built before one of the owners bails.

It is just unreal who Bettman will involve himself with just to try and prove his critics wrong. While he was one of the richest people in Canada, with rock solid foundations and a building in Quebec, knocking on his door. 

[Alflives]

10 minutes ago, mll said:

 

Lame Duck club for another season in that 5000 seat rink? That’s a lot of lost money. I wonder if the league will need to step in again and buy the club if they intend on the Coyotes staying another year? The current owner might not want those losses. 

[Ghostsof1915]

1 minute ago, MaxVerstappen33 said:

The voting down of this deal is also a blessing in disguise for the NHL. One of the owners in the deal has been shown to be a snake. If that's who he was, who is his business partners? The financing of this whole deal was probably on shaky ground. The arena would probably get half built before one of the owners bails.

It is just unreal who Bettman will involve himself with just to try and prove his critics wrong. While he was one of the richest people in Canada, with rock solid foundations and a building in Quebec, knocking on his door. 

Look up John Spano, and "Boots" Del Biaggio.

[Alflives]

5 minutes ago, MaxVerstappen33 said:

The voting down of this deal is also a blessing in disguise for the NHL. One of the owners in the deal has been shown to be a snake. If that's who he was, who is his business partners? The financing of this whole deal was probably on shaky ground. The arena would probably get half built before one of the owners bails.

It is just unreal who Bettman will involve himself with just to try and prove his critics wrong. While he was one of the richest people in Canada, with rock solid foundations and a building in Quebec, knocking on his door. 

The only option for the club might be to sell to the Quebec City group. I just can’t see the current owner wanting to stay for another season in that little arena and have more huge losses. 

[RUPERTKBD]

2 minutes ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Look up John Spano, and "Boots" Del Biaggio.

Is Boots still in the slammer, or has he done his time?

[Ghostsof1915]

2 minutes ago, RUPERTKBD said:

Is Boots still in the slammer, or has he done his time?

He got 8 years, that was back in 2009. So I assume he's been out for a while now.

[RUPERTKBD]

1 minute ago, Alflives said:

The only option for the club might be to sell to the Quebec City group. I just can’t see the current owner wanting to stay for another season in that little arena and have more huge losses. 

I'm in agreement with Ghosts on Quebec City...I'd expect them to be way down the list of preferred destinations for a relocating franchise....especially one currently in the Western Conference.

 

The league will want a city that they can slot into the WC, that also provides a reasonable chance of an expansion of the television market....

[Ghostsof1915]

I'd love to see a franchise in Quebec City. It's just the logistics and set up of the conferences don't work for it.

Doesn't matter if they have an owner and venue ready to go.

If it was Carolina that was failing or an Eastern based team, then yes.

 

The only other way I see it working. The NHL allows the Coyotes to move to a city that works for the Western conference.

Then allows two expansion franchises one west, one east.

I'd take Quebec City over Atlanta any day.

 

 

[mll]

They thought it was going to be a landslide victory and barely campaigned they were so confident they'll win.  

The atmosphere at the Four Peaks tasting room in Tempe was festive on Tuesday night. The Tempe Wins campaign and its supporters were confident that good news was coming in the special election that would decide the fate of the Coyotes’ proposed arena and entertainment district along the south bank of the Salt River. They were confident that two-plus decades of instability were about to end.

 

Former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano was there. Current councilmembers Randy Keating, Jennifer Adams and Berdetta Hodge and former councilmember Onni Shekerjian were there. Former Cardinals quarterback John Skelton was there. So were Coyotes officials and a host of community business leaders.

 

Buoyed by internal polling, multiple sources predicted somewhere between 56 and 57 percent support for the franchise’s proposal that would transform a long-standing dump site into a sprawling development, replete with an arena, hotels, restaurants, shops and residences.

 

When the first batch of votes from Maricopa County was posted on a large screen at the front of the venue at 8 p.m., the fantasy evaporated into hard data. The party became a funeral. 

 

This wasn’t a close election as some sources had predicted. This was a whipping so thorough that the second batch of unreleased votes was rendered insignificant. So were all of the rehearsed victory speeches.

“We are very disappointed Tempe voters did not approve Propositions 301, 302 and 303,” Coyotes President and CEO Xavier A. Gutierrez said. “As Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said, it was the best sports deal in Arizona history. What is next for the franchise will be evaluated by our owners and the National Hockey League over the coming weeks.”

 

With that, Gutierrez departed without taking any questions from reporters. So did many of the dignitaries, leaving a skeleton crew searching for answers.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman did not offer any more insight in a prepared statement. When reached by text message on Tuesday night, it was clear that he was also stunned by the results.

 

The only thing clear after Tuesday night is that the Coyotes arena proposal is dead. And that chilling reality raises a host of questions.

 

Do Coyotes have Plan B?

Very early in this process, Gutierrez was asked if he had a backup plan. He admitted that it would be irresponsible not to have one, but there has been nothing more than speculation about those possibilities because the Coyotes have been so focused on Tempe. 

(...)

 

Are Coyotes out of time?

The problem with all of those Plan Bs is that they would take time to organize. The Tempe deal was at least a couple years in the making, if you discount work by the previous ownership group on a similar deal. The Coyotes were already slated to play three more seasons at ASU’s Mullett Arena if the Tempe deal went through. It is difficult to imagine the league signing off on even more seasons there.

 

The NHL Board of Governors is not happy with that arrangement and its impact on league revenue. The NHL Players’ Association is not happy that its players are competing and training in substandard facilities while Mullet’s shortcomings are also impacting overall league revenue. You can almost imagine the myriad phone calls that Bettman is fielding today from influential sources to offer a simple message: “Enough!”

 

In past moments of crisis when the Coyotes’ fate was uncertain, Bettman always reassured the Arizona market that the league was committed to a future here. On Tuesday night, it was telling that Bettman offered no such assurances. Perhaps that was because he was caught off guard by the news. Perhaps it was because he no longer could offer such assurances after two-and-a half decades of unrequited love, and in the face of mounting pressure from league owners and the PA. 

 

How did the Coyotes so badly misjudge the electorate?

In February, more than two months after the Tempe City Council unanimously approved sending the Coyotes’ proposal to a public vote, councilmember Randy Keating joined the PHNX Coyotes show to express his frustration over the lack of activity from the team and its campaign.

 

“There is such a thing as losing the narrative; losing the initiative,” Keating said. “Once you convince somebody that something is bad or something is good, then you have confirmation bias kick in so then it’s so much harder to [change their minds].”

 

Keating was not alone in his belief that the Coyotes and Tempe Wins were slow to get going and weak in their efforts to match the Tempe 1st opposition, which was off and rolling in December. It was a belief that permeated the city council and city staff. It was a belief shared by election experts in the Valley. It was a belief that continued all the way to voting day.

 

Gutierrez said all along that the team’s late rollout was planned after the holidays and the Super Bowl to keep the issue “top of mind” with voters as the vote drew closer, but critics wondered if the campaign simply got outsmarted and outspent by an opposition group that adopted a poor-man’s persona but was, in reality, heavily backed by unions, some out of state.

 

There was a steady flow of misinformation from Tempe 1st, and a fair amount of hidden agendas in what was often a disingenuous campaign. But that’s politics. You play to win the game, and that’s what the often fact-free rhetoric accomplished.

 

As noted previously, the team’s own polling suggested that it had as large as a 10-point lead heading into vote day. If that is, in fact, what the firm that the Coyotes hired found then that firm’s credibility is gone. The results were the exact opposite of what team and city sources expected. Tuesday’s vote party became a massive embarrassment for the team and its broad coalition of supporters that included all former mayors, all current councilmembers and almost all former councilmembers.

 

“In my experience, municipal polling is exponentially harder than statewide, especially in a city the size of Tempe,” data analyst Garrett Archer said before the vote. “If I were to poll I think it would cost upwards of $50,000 just to get a good sample. Which is insane.”

 

It’s unclear what the Coyotes spent on polling, but they clearly did not uncover an accurate sample.

 

Why did the vote have to go to referendum?

This question has come up again and again. The simple answer is that the Coyotes knew this deal was going to be challenged by unions and opposition groups, who would have easily gathered the signatures required to send it to referendum. 

 

Per Arizona referendum law, had the team waited for that eventuality, the required 180-day window would have pushed the vote to August. The Coyotes wanted to speed up the timeline to speed up their move into their new home.

 

Not all election experts agreed with that decision.

 

“There were multiple steps for the anti folks before a referendum,” said Kathren Coleman, a political and communications consultant for two decades who served as deputy recorder for communications under Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, and also worked for former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano. “All the work would have been on the anti campaign. I don’t know who advised the Coyotes to pursue this path electorally, but they were poorly advised by a campaign operative.”

 

 

[Goal:thecup]

34 minutes ago, mll said:

 

Once you go mullet, you can never live it down.

"Party in the back, Dudes!"