The Desert Dogs of Wayne Gretzky are in danger of going belly up. The Great One's Phoenix Coyotes team is bleeding money like a teetering Wall Street bank. There have been a score of articles that have followed up the Globe & Mail's investigation into the dire financial situation of the Phoenix franchise.
One point that comes out is that the NHL's Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is putting a big hurt on small market teams.
The CBA is the crowning jewel of of Gary Bettman's term as NHL Commissioner. Specifically the problem is the salary "floor" that is implemented under the CBA. The current CBA "floor" salary for a team is around $40 Million. This "floor" has become too much of an expense for many small market teams. So the final legacy of the Bettman led lockout might be the bankruptcy of several NHL teams or their migration north.
So who exactly did the CBA/lockout help the most? Not the players and not the small market teams.
David Shoalts / The Globe & Mail:
The bleeding continues in the desert --
Almost everything the Phoenix Coyotes own or earn is pledged as collateral to SOF Investments LP of New York, according to financial documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.NY Times:
Two NHL governors say the financial situation is distressed to the point that the Coyotes have had to draw on advances from the league to meet a $42.4-million (all currency U.S.) annual player payroll and operational expenses. The advances are made from anticipated NHL broadcast rights, merchandise sales and revenue sharing.
It is not known exactly how much money the Coyotes have received from the NHL. The game schedule is at the halfway point, which could mean, under NHL bylaws, the club cannot have received more than half of the money it expects from shared revenue. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the Coyotes have not yet received as much as half of their expected share of the NHL revenue, which could come to $22-million.
In return for the advances, the Coyotes need the NHL's approval for any major player or financial transactions, according to sources...
The Morning Skate: How Did the Coyotes Mess Happen? --
On Saturday night, the Hot Stove panel on “Hockey Night in Canada” began its second-intermission segment discussing the hypothetical dispersal draft for the Phoenix Coyotes. Talk about jumping the gun...
The HNiC panel’s premature evaluation was set off by a particular report late last week in The Globe and Mail. Fresh off its most recent offensive against fighting in hockey (here, here and here) in the aftermath of Don Sanderson’s death, the national paper blew out the front page of its sports section with a red-ink-splattered package — literally — on the Coyotes’ financial woes.
No newspaper has been as dogged in chronicling the ongoing troubles of the N.H.L.’s U.S.-based franchises, and its journalists — especially David Shoalts and columnist Stephen Brunt — deserve credit for mining their sources to cut through the “all is well” output of the league’s fog machine...
On Frozen Blog:
How About a Depression-Led Realignment?
Our good friend Lyle Richardson has been following the macro-economic story and its potential impact on the NHL. Last month Richardson quoted the Toronto Star's Kevin McGran and his claim that NHL owners were looking to "the game's hotbeds as an economic salve," which front and center includes the specter of struggling U.S. clubs moving way north, over the border...Cam Cole / Vancouver Sun:
Coyotes may be first in NHL bankruptcy stakes --
Even as the NHL pretends to be unconcerned that almost every scrap of Coyotes' assets are in hock to a New York equity-fund company, because the league believes the franchise is worth more than its debt, it may be time to question that belief.Damien Cox / Toronto Star:
What would a bankrupt team be worth, when it can't move because it's locked into a 30-year lease in a remote arena located miles from its nearest fan, a site chosen because it was part of a real-estate speculation that failed? What is any franchise worth unless there is a buyer interested in having it, and which buyer would that be -- and in which market -- as long as Gary Bettman and his influential backers on the Board of Governors keep snubbing RIM founder Jim Balsillie because they are running scared of the Toronto Maple Leafs?
You wouldn't want to swallow the oft-bandied-about figure of $30 million in annual losses since the franchise left Winnipeg...
Coyotes could be next body buried in desert --
The Phoenix Coyotes may prove to be the story of the second half of the NHL season.
For all the wrong reasons.
As of yesterday, the surprising Desert Dogs were holding down seventh spot in the Western Conference, a tribute to their improving young players and the underrated coaching of Wayne Gretzky.
But they are also, it's believed, not only a house of cards about to fall, but a house of cards on fire.
So while the NHL would like to direct your attention to the remarkable host of twenty-something players who have all but taken over the league this season, or to the renaissance of the Original Six operations in Boston and Chicago, or to the overall outstanding quality of play this season, the state of the Coyotes in a rapidly deteriorating North American economy could take centre stage...
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ICINGS:
Olympic skating champion Katarina Witt, who is now 43, is co-hosting a German television sports show, and she was on Grouse Mountain to shoot a countdown to the 2010 Olympics.Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun
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