Coyotes Sale Could Be Finalized Next Week, and Then What

Yet another breaking news story from the Phoenix Coyotes sale. The more I read about the City Council and the Goldwater Institute, the less I think this is as close to done as some people think.

Why the optimism looked premature

The report itself was plain enough: the sale could be finalized next week. But a sale being finalized and a franchise being settled are two different things, and the post separated them. The City Council and the Goldwater Institute were the two bodies standing between a signed deal and a quiet summer.

Two ways it could still play out

The author would not have been surprised if the sale were completed and then Glendale and the Goldwater side threw more roadblocks up. If that happened, the thinking went, the NHL would close the book on the story, and one of two things would follow.

Either the Jamison group would back out, and another group would swoop in quickly to buy the team and move it, or the Jamison group would still buy the team a little later, with a plan in place to move it to a new city with a cushy arena deal.

What the archive takes from it

The lesson is structural rather than dramatic. A completed sale does not automatically produce a stable franchise, and a franchise without stability is still a candidate for the moving van. That is why the realignment project kept a Phoenix-shaped hole in its maps for months, even on weeks when the news sounded finished.

The post ran under a single category, hockey, with no map and no scenario attached. Some weeks are just a note in the margin, and this was one of them.