This time, the fight's over for Balsillie
LAS VEGAS -- If there is one moment that illustrates the inherent flaws in Jim Balsillie's quixotic bid not just to own an NHL team, but also to plunk it down wherever he wants, it recently took place in a cafeteria near the downtown Phoenix court where the Coyotes' immediate future was being debated.
Balsillie's right-hand man, lawyer Richard Rodier, remarked out loud that one of the patrons in the luncheonette bore a striking resemblance to NHL Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur. Rodier then asked the man whether he was a hockey fan, presumably to reinforce the Balsillie camp's belief that no one in Phoenix cares about the sport or whether its NHL team takes the high dive or not.
The man in question, however, was Phoenix Coyotes GM Don Maloney.
Now, one might imagine that if you were trying to take control of an NHL team, you might want to familiarize yourself with the key members of your management team. At least it wasn't Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky that Rodier failed to recognize. But the point is this: Balsillie has never really gotten it right in his pursuit of an NHL team.
No matter how much money he has (and he's got a lot of it) and how much he professes to love the game (he loves it a lot, apparently) and how many Canadians sign on to his Web site promoting another Canadian NHL franchise (lots and lots), it means nothing if you can't work with the big boys in the club.
The decision this week by a Phoenix judge to dismiss Balsillie's bid to buy the Coyotes out of bankruptcy and relocate them to Southern Ontario is another strike against the BlackBerry mogul. No matter how much he insists, through his people, that the fight isn't over, it is.
The fight has been lost now on three separate occasions (Pittsburgh and Nashville are the other clubs, for those keeping score at home), and unless Balsillie can find a way to make nice with a group he badly wants to join, he is done. Like dinner.
Maybe there is a judge somewhere who will allow Balsillie simply to pound the NHL into submission with his big checkbook, but given the support the league has from the other three major sports leagues in North America to prevent such a thing from happening, we doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.
Now, does that make the NHL a winner? Perhaps, in the narrowest of views. When you win the right to take control of a sinking ship, you still have a sinking ship, and you'd better have the buckets at the ready. All the NHL did was retain all-important control over what happens to the Coyotes, a franchise that has been leaking red virtually from the moment it arrived from Winnipeg in the summer of 1996.
And now comes the hard part: making it right in Phoenix. Or wherever.
The one thing about the Balsillie bid to buy the Coyotes and drag them across the continent to what many believe is the most logical place in the world to put an NHL franchise, new or used, is that it has loosened the tightly packed earth around the notion of a second team in the Toronto area.
Other potential owners interested in being part of a second Toronto-area team have started to come out of the woodwork. They may not be as well-heeled as Balsillie, but they are certainly better mannered and more attractive as far as the NHL is concerned (and, in the end, until Balsillie finds a judge who disagrees, the league controls the doors to its own little club).
The task for the league, though, remains daunting. Commissioner Gary Bettman et al. have to tread a fine line between delivering the ownership groups he insisted were waiting in the shadows to keep the team in Phoenix (Jerry Reinsdorf, come on down) and preparing for an orderly relocation if the Coyotes continue to founder.
Does anyone really know whether the Coyotes can make it in Phoenix? The simple and most honest answer is no. The team has played so badly on the ice and been so badly mismanaged off it, it's difficult to tell just what might grow in that fallow land in Glendale. Hard to imagine the Coyotes' becoming another Pittsburgh; but, three years ago, it was also hard to imagine Pittsburgh's becoming another Pittsburgh.
Likewise, there were hardship cases in Ottawa and Buffalo, Edmonton and Calgary, which seemed destined for relocation or implosion. Now, they are all members in good standing of the NHL club.
One thing seems certain, though: The NHL cannot blow this opportunity. It has beaten back the barbarian at the gates and now has to manage the situation to retain its credibility.
In a summer that should provide a special afterglow following a wildly successful season -- huge television ratings for a compelling Cup finals, great young stars not yet at their peak, renewed vitality in crucial markets like Chicago and Boston -- the NHL still has its fair share of brush fires to deal with.
Is it not always so in the NHL? Is it not so in virtually every pro sports league? Long Island looks like it might be lurching toward a deal that will provide a new or refurbished home for the long-suffering Islanders. The Florida Panthers are looking to find a new owner, and that process is in limbo. The Atlanta Thrashers are still trying to sort out a complicated ownership battle that will almost certainly require the ownership group to come up with some significant capital in the form of new investors.
But first and foremost, the league needs to take care of the Phoenix mess, no matter which direction it takes the league and the Coyotes themselves.
Scott Burnside covers the NHL for ESPN.com.
