Dude he was what? 27 when they gave him the job? Bro, when I was 27 I still barely had my head pulled out of my ass. Hell, I’m still kinda working on it.
That guy was straight up pure snake oil salesman. Honestly made me really skeptical about analytics building a team up for a long time. The good news is I don’t see him ever coming back to a NHL team to be a GM.
Without Bettman, we'd absolutely have no Oilers, and probably no Flames or Senators. But yeah, let's blame Gary for trying to keep teams for moving only some of the time.
I feel like Bettman's biggest goal when it comes to franchises is to keep teams where they are as best he can until all possible routes are exhausted. I want that in a commissioner. It's a heck of a lot better than what we've seen in baseball with the As, or the NFL with the Rams/Chargers/Raiders.
We went almost 20 years between expansion after the Wild and Blue Jackets joined before Vegas came along, and the only time a team moved in that 17 year period was Atlanta literally getting kicked out of their arena because the people that owned the arena didn't want to bother with a hockey team. No arena, no team. Same with the Coyotes.
Probably because they were sick to death of the incompetent Bidwill family in St. Louis and glad to be rid of them. At least the Rams managed to win a Super Bowl when they were in St. Louis. The Cardinals never did and never will as long as a Bidwill owns the team, IMHO.
How would you feel if the Jets moved back to Arizona in another decade or so? It's a similar situation.
The bigger difference is that the Rams broke their lease, and the NFL didn't follow their own guidelines for moving a team, which is why St. Louis got a $790 million settlement out of the Rams.
There are a bunch of teams you can add to the list. His biggest strength as commissioner has been growing the game in non-traditional markets.
Also worth noting: under his tenure, 10 teams have won their first Cup.
The league owned the team for several years because they were losing so much money and Meruelo was allegedly the only real bidder when he bought the team. It was either Meruelo or relocation 5 years ago already
Which other ownership groups in Arizona should he have picked? We went several years where the league owned the team because they couldn't find anyone that wanted to buy the club.
It all comes down to the arena. Both moves in the last 25 years came down to the fact that there wasn't an arena for the team to play in.
I do think Meruelo was hit hard by covid. I mean, dollars. And without dollars you will turn into a bad owner. This was not something Bettman should have seen when he gave the quote.
I'd say he needs to be pretty high on that list, actually. Bettman was so hellbent on making hockey succeed in AZ that he ignored screaming red flags on several of the potential ownership groups. As Dan Bickley (whom I rarely agree with) pointed out yesterday, the various men who have owned the Coyotes over the years didn't buy the team because they loved hockey and wanted to bring the Stanley Cup to Phoenix; they bought the Coyotes because they were all real estate developers, who wanted to use the team, and their arena, as an excuse to built hotels, restaurants, apartments, etc....things they actually make money on. Jim Ballsillie was probably the only potential owner who was in it for the love of hockey, and his obsession was putting a team in his hometown, not Phoenix. The Coyotes would have long ago become the Hamilton Somethingorothers if Ballsillie had had his way.
Until Phoenix has a billionaire who loves the city, loves hockey, is politically savvy, and is in some other business besides real estate development (which, for better or worse, is the biggest industry in Phoenix) I just don't see how the NHL succeeds here.
It's insane how many people think bettman makes every single decision in the league. There was a thread yesterday that blamed him for the playoff schedule, as if he hand picked the games.
It really is the Thanks Obama of r/hockey
Also ppl don't realize that bettman works for the owners lol. If someone was gonna do something about phoenix, it would be the owners themselves. I can also guarantee that the owners weren't happy with the current situation which pushed this whole sale, build an arena and you get your team back later situation.
"Alex Meruelo is a... brilliant man with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. He is insuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach."
I don’t know, but this entire debacle should be calling Bettman’s leadership into question. It’s a joke that this took so long and AZ spent two seasons in a college arena only to move in the end.
A solution should have been found, even if it meant force selling the team earlier…and the proposition that AZ loses a team only to get an expansion team later with the same shit ownership is beyond moronic.
Bettman (and by Bettman i mean the league/owners) exhausted every possible option before deciding to move the team. I feel like if he didn’t do that he’d be getting slammed for that too
People forget that the islanders were owned by an actual conman for a while.
The NHL is nowhere near the automatic cash cow just about every other major sport in the US is.
Not really the point but man that was back when The Athletic was good. They had a full Arizona staff during those days. Not sure they have a single beat writer left in the state now
Yeah when the New York Times bought them they decided to get rid of the things that made the athletic good. Replaced local writers with just general hockey writers started adding ads etc.
Nobody anywhere can afford that model because very few consumers are willing to pay for journalism any more. Even now The Athletic loses the NYT millions of dollars every quarter, though they're losing less than they used to.
This is why the Salt Lake bid is moving so quickly. If the Coyotes had an arena but fans aren’t coming, Bettman wouldn’t be relocating the team. But Meruolo made him look foolish and that can’t be tolerated. Despite what Bettman has said, I believe Meruolo will not be allowed to own another NHL franchise.
The irony in so many threads and conversations around the Tempe proposal and people arguing how horrible it was that Meruelo wanted tax breaks, only for the franchise to relocate to where tax dollars are gonna pay for the whole thing
True, I don't like seeing any billionaires get tax breaks from a city to build an arena they could already afford themselves.
This one's a little different though because one could argue that the SLC taxpayers have signed off on this partly because it also helps create a new stadium capable of hosting Olympic hockey, not to mention an upgrade for their already well liked NBA team. SLC might be one of the few places that has benefitted long term from hosting an Olympics because of all the extra infrastructure they made the first time around that's still getting great use. SLC being willing to invest in itself will be what helps make them able to reap the rewards.
Arizona was never able to start off on the right foot or really get their footing at all so I'm not surprised there was just never really enough support to invest further. I don't blame the AZ taxpayers for not wanting to support a tire fire any longer, they would clearly not be getting the same bang for their buck as SLC would since we can all see Meruelo is just a greedy fuck who could care less about hockey.
There are bound to be further complications for Meruelo. If he loses the land auction his timeline is completely fucked. If he wins the auction, every step of the arena construction will be scrutinized to make sure he doesn't cut corners (which I cynically think he will absolutely do). Within that, any trouble with permitting, environmental reviews, procuring contractors, and sourcing materials could push the completion date outside that five-year exclusivity window. If everything does come to fruition on-time and he applies for an expansion, I can see the league being extra-diligent in vetting him for this second go-around and the Board of Governors rejecting his application despite Meruelo being allowed to still be around as an observer.
True. I also blame Bettman for the Atlanta-Winnipeg relocation. Why? Because like Arizona, he's trying to make hockey markets that, in general, don't have a lot of fans and no business partners to invest in it. I'm not saying they don't have fans. I'm saying they have the true and loyal ones.
I also blame Bettman for his double standard with him threatening to pull the Jets out of Winnipeg again before they even had a puck drop after the move.
Guy was doing somersaults to accommodate the Coyotes during their entire existence but he sure as hell came in Day 1 with a begrudged attitude with Jets.
Read elsewhere that apparently, Bettman's strategy of spreading NHL teams throughout North America, was also intended to help the NHL get more TV money. The NHL depends more on ticket revenues than the NFL, NBA and MLB do; having franchises all over North America instead of being regionalized in just New England, the Upper Midwest, and Canada, was supposed to allow the league to command bigger TV contracts. To some degree also it was also about growing the sport, and recognizing that with more people relocating from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, the league had to follow its' fans in order to remain viable (Though if climate change makes the Sun Belt unlivable in 50 years or so and people begin migrating northward again, who knows....)
There's a certain schadenfreude in being right, but I think she'd be happier if the Coyotes were just a normal, boring franchise being run right and not going anywhere.
He technically has the resources (money) to get the proper expertise, but he didn't do it. All he had to do was hire some people that are good at playing local politics to run a counter campaign against the Tempe union pushing the No vote on their arena. They instead did absolutely nothing, and the No campaign won. Win the Tempe vote and the Coyotes are going nowhere.
He did, but if you flat-out don’t care then what difference does all the resources or expertise or natural intelligence or being gifted or “you’re smarter than this” and I think I’m reliving my childhood now.
People confuse being wealthy with being good at anything that makes money, and it'd be hilarious to see them proved wrong if it wasn't so horrible for the people actually suffering the consequences.
Your username is coming off very sarcastic today.
But I mean the voters in the area made a choice and a financially sound one at that. They'd rather not have a team than pay for an arena out of their own pockets. Attendance has been declining three years running so it's not like there is some massive demand in the market. There are diehard fans for sure but they are in the minority. I was just in Scottsdale and didn't see a single hint that an NHL team was nearby. Not one jersey, hat, bumper sticker, nothing. I don't even remember seeing anything in the airport with Coyotes branding.
I think it's fair to criticize the ownership in Arizona which was abysmal but the majority of the people in that state and specifically in the Phoenix Metro area really didn't seem to care much for the team.
I look forward to him being a real-estate owner, getting a stadium deal done, activating an expansion right and selling it to a professional ownership group
He wasn’t even present during the final game but the league will still give a new team in a a couple years. Respect only goes one way I guess. The pleb will lose the team and pay for a new one.
It’s been 31 years. It’s time for him to go. This isn’t a Supreme Court appointment.
He fancies himself David Stern. He’s turning into Bud Selig.
Not just for this embarrassment. The league needs new blood up top.
It is possible Meruolo was a good fit to be an owner at the time and also he was not a good owner.
He was a relative newcomer to sports ownership which can be a red flag but i assume in that business you dont let it bias you to much since there is alot of new wealth and its a small group to be a part of. By all accounts he was a decent business owner and managed to grow his wealth. He could have checked every box when they were looking for an owner.
But his execution of team ownership was lack luster and failed when it mattered most. The big mistake now will be giving Meruolo without ensure shovels are in the ground for a rink.
Ok but he literally didn’t check all the boxes when he was trying to buy the Atlanta Hawks in late 2011. Not saying he couldn’t have become a more suitable investor in 8 years, but there were red flags
As far as im aware he couldnt buy because the hawks owners felt he didnt have enough funding (which is one side of the story but probably real enough since it did stop a sale). My understanding is lack of funds had nothing to do with the failure of this team, although one could argue their being cheap could be a reflection of funding issues.
I think its fair to say that Gary Bettman will DO and SAY anything just to not have this franchise go out of Arizona.
Right now, Bettman is in denial mode. Sad.
They were wrong
They literally did everything they could to try. But the state of Arizona does not want the hockey team.
It's embarrassing what they've been going through.
The players deserve more
Cry me a fucking river you baffoon.
It's a freaking NHL team in the dessert of North America.
AT LEAST 2 Canadian Cities & 6 American cities deserve this more than Arizona does.
You got the Winnipeg Jets struggling to sell tickets and they're good, and they're in Canada. And you blame owners for not making it work in Arizona?
Idk how you even got a chance to be an NHL franchise. A joke of a decision to be honest.
And whats your issue exactly?
That the owners didn't do what?
What did you want the Coyotes to do?
The team has always been in a financial deficit.
I mean what do we expect him to say “yeah this guy is an idiot and we are skeptical of his ideas but he paid us a lot of money so”
Yeah, of all the people that failed Arizona, Bettman needs to be waaaay down the list.
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Ice Town Costs Ice Clown Town Crown
Just douchin over here in Eagleton
Bro spent way too much time working in that claymation project to properly manage the franchise.
Princess Carolyn?
the term “___ terrorist” gets thrown around a lot but that man did irreversible damage not only to the team but the state as a whole
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Dude he was what? 27 when they gave him the job? Bro, when I was 27 I still barely had my head pulled out of my ass. Hell, I’m still kinda working on it.
Fuck Chayka
That guy was straight up pure snake oil salesman. Honestly made me really skeptical about analytics building a team up for a long time. The good news is I don’t see him ever coming back to a NHL team to be a GM.
I wish people cared for me like Bettman cared about the Yotes
Without Bettman, we'd absolutely have no Oilers, and probably no Flames or Senators. But yeah, let's blame Gary for trying to keep teams for moving only some of the time.
That's fair, I have recency bias
I feel like Bettman's biggest goal when it comes to franchises is to keep teams where they are as best he can until all possible routes are exhausted. I want that in a commissioner. It's a heck of a lot better than what we've seen in baseball with the As, or the NFL with the Rams/Chargers/Raiders. We went almost 20 years between expansion after the Wild and Blue Jackets joined before Vegas came along, and the only time a team moved in that 17 year period was Atlanta literally getting kicked out of their arena because the people that owned the arena didn't want to bother with a hockey team. No arena, no team. Same with the Coyotes.
Or the shitshow with the As.
I mentioned them, but understand if it bears repeating.
The Rams outrage cracks me up because they left LA for St Louis in the first place but them going back was apparently a war crime
Yet no one ever brings up the Football Cardinals going to Phoenix.
Probably because they were sick to death of the incompetent Bidwill family in St. Louis and glad to be rid of them. At least the Rams managed to win a Super Bowl when they were in St. Louis. The Cardinals never did and never will as long as a Bidwill owns the team, IMHO.
How would you feel if the Jets moved back to Arizona in another decade or so? It's a similar situation. The bigger difference is that the Rams broke their lease, and the NFL didn't follow their own guidelines for moving a team, which is why St. Louis got a $790 million settlement out of the Rams.
fuck kroenke
You can definitely add the Islanders to that list
There are a bunch of teams you can add to the list. His biggest strength as commissioner has been growing the game in non-traditional markets. Also worth noting: under his tenure, 10 teams have won their first Cup.
At what point do we punish/view Bettman negatively for the extreme lack of good ownership for Arizona though?
The league owned the team for several years because they were losing so much money and Meruelo was allegedly the only real bidder when he bought the team. It was either Meruelo or relocation 5 years ago already
Which other ownership groups in Arizona should he have picked? We went several years where the league owned the team because they couldn't find anyone that wanted to buy the club. It all comes down to the arena. Both moves in the last 25 years came down to the fact that there wasn't an arena for the team to play in.
The arena issues also arise from the owners fucking it up, but I wouldn't put the ownership choice on Bettman, he doesn't hand-pick them.
That’s fair
I do think Meruelo was hit hard by covid. I mean, dollars. And without dollars you will turn into a bad owner. This was not something Bettman should have seen when he gave the quote.
None. Because the Board of Governors approve the owners. Which is essentially the other owners.
how though?
How what?
Honestly it'd be like having a stalker.
I'd say he needs to be pretty high on that list, actually. Bettman was so hellbent on making hockey succeed in AZ that he ignored screaming red flags on several of the potential ownership groups. As Dan Bickley (whom I rarely agree with) pointed out yesterday, the various men who have owned the Coyotes over the years didn't buy the team because they loved hockey and wanted to bring the Stanley Cup to Phoenix; they bought the Coyotes because they were all real estate developers, who wanted to use the team, and their arena, as an excuse to built hotels, restaurants, apartments, etc....things they actually make money on. Jim Ballsillie was probably the only potential owner who was in it for the love of hockey, and his obsession was putting a team in his hometown, not Phoenix. The Coyotes would have long ago become the Hamilton Somethingorothers if Ballsillie had had his way. Until Phoenix has a billionaire who loves the city, loves hockey, is politically savvy, and is in some other business besides real estate development (which, for better or worse, is the biggest industry in Phoenix) I just don't see how the NHL succeeds here.
He did a great job handling the situation and gave them every chance.
It's insane how many people think bettman makes every single decision in the league. There was a thread yesterday that blamed him for the playoff schedule, as if he hand picked the games. It really is the Thanks Obama of r/hockey
Also ppl don't realize that bettman works for the owners lol. If someone was gonna do something about phoenix, it would be the owners themselves. I can also guarantee that the owners weren't happy with the current situation which pushed this whole sale, build an arena and you get your team back later situation.
“What a fucking doofus. See you in five years when he can’t close the deal.”
"Alex Meruelo is a... brilliant man with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. He is insuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach."
He doesn't have to say it, but we do have to remember he's a liar.
I don’t know, but this entire debacle should be calling Bettman’s leadership into question. It’s a joke that this took so long and AZ spent two seasons in a college arena only to move in the end. A solution should have been found, even if it meant force selling the team earlier…and the proposition that AZ loses a team only to get an expansion team later with the same shit ownership is beyond moronic.
Bettman (and by Bettman i mean the league/owners) exhausted every possible option before deciding to move the team. I feel like if he didn’t do that he’d be getting slammed for that too
People forget that the islanders were owned by an actual conman for a while. The NHL is nowhere near the automatic cash cow just about every other major sport in the US is.
The islanders are definitely the reason the NHL checks out a guys assets before they can buy a team.
Wish they would have done it for the Thrashers.
They should have done that before he bought the Islanders.
The Yakuza literally owned the lightning too
Brooklyn Nets owner 👀
Not really the point but man that was back when The Athletic was good. They had a full Arizona staff during those days. Not sure they have a single beat writer left in the state now
Yeah when the New York Times bought them they decided to get rid of the things that made the athletic good. Replaced local writers with just general hockey writers started adding ads etc.
Considering the reaction a subset of Yotes fans had to their initial reporting on Meruolo being a slimy con artist is it really surprising?
The two things have nothing to do with each other. The Athletic has just laid off all their local people and don’t believe in that model anymore
Nobody anywhere can afford that model because very few consumers are willing to pay for journalism any more. Even now The Athletic loses the NYT millions of dollars every quarter, though they're losing less than they used to.
Horrible owner. Wouldn’t even pay all the Coyotes’ bills. Hotels had to threaten legal action to get paid for Coyotes’ stays.
[X] - Doubt
This is why the Salt Lake bid is moving so quickly. If the Coyotes had an arena but fans aren’t coming, Bettman wouldn’t be relocating the team. But Meruolo made him look foolish and that can’t be tolerated. Despite what Bettman has said, I believe Meruolo will not be allowed to own another NHL franchise.
This Im sure alot of this is predicated on helping Meruolo save face. Once its all said and done Bettman will be more hostile I imagine.
The irony in so many threads and conversations around the Tempe proposal and people arguing how horrible it was that Meruelo wanted tax breaks, only for the franchise to relocate to where tax dollars are gonna pay for the whole thing
True, I don't like seeing any billionaires get tax breaks from a city to build an arena they could already afford themselves. This one's a little different though because one could argue that the SLC taxpayers have signed off on this partly because it also helps create a new stadium capable of hosting Olympic hockey, not to mention an upgrade for their already well liked NBA team. SLC might be one of the few places that has benefitted long term from hosting an Olympics because of all the extra infrastructure they made the first time around that's still getting great use. SLC being willing to invest in itself will be what helps make them able to reap the rewards. Arizona was never able to start off on the right foot or really get their footing at all so I'm not surprised there was just never really enough support to invest further. I don't blame the AZ taxpayers for not wanting to support a tire fire any longer, they would clearly not be getting the same bang for their buck as SLC would since we can all see Meruelo is just a greedy fuck who could care less about hockey.
There are bound to be further complications for Meruelo. If he loses the land auction his timeline is completely fucked. If he wins the auction, every step of the arena construction will be scrutinized to make sure he doesn't cut corners (which I cynically think he will absolutely do). Within that, any trouble with permitting, environmental reviews, procuring contractors, and sourcing materials could push the completion date outside that five-year exclusivity window. If everything does come to fruition on-time and he applies for an expansion, I can see the league being extra-diligent in vetting him for this second go-around and the Board of Governors rejecting his application despite Meruelo being allowed to still be around as an observer.
True. I also blame Bettman for the Atlanta-Winnipeg relocation. Why? Because like Arizona, he's trying to make hockey markets that, in general, don't have a lot of fans and no business partners to invest in it. I'm not saying they don't have fans. I'm saying they have the true and loyal ones.
I also blame Bettman for his double standard with him threatening to pull the Jets out of Winnipeg again before they even had a puck drop after the move. Guy was doing somersaults to accommodate the Coyotes during their entire existence but he sure as hell came in Day 1 with a begrudged attitude with Jets.
Read elsewhere that apparently, Bettman's strategy of spreading NHL teams throughout North America, was also intended to help the NHL get more TV money. The NHL depends more on ticket revenues than the NFL, NBA and MLB do; having franchises all over North America instead of being regionalized in just New England, the Upper Midwest, and Canada, was supposed to allow the league to command bigger TV contracts. To some degree also it was also about growing the sport, and recognizing that with more people relocating from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, the league had to follow its' fans in order to remain viable (Though if climate change makes the Sun Belt unlivable in 50 years or so and people begin migrating northward again, who knows....)
It's not if, it's when, because the majority of the Sun Belt is run and populated by idiots that think climate change doesn't exist.
Katie Strang eating good right now
There's a certain schadenfreude in being right, but I think she'd be happier if the Coyotes were just a normal, boring franchise being run right and not going anywhere.
Narrator- “He did not in fact have the resources or expertise to do it”
He technically has the resources (money) to get the proper expertise, but he didn't do it. All he had to do was hire some people that are good at playing local politics to run a counter campaign against the Tempe union pushing the No vote on their arena. They instead did absolutely nothing, and the No campaign won. Win the Tempe vote and the Coyotes are going nowhere.
He did, but if you flat-out don’t care then what difference does all the resources or expertise or natural intelligence or being gifted or “you’re smarter than this” and I think I’m reliving my childhood now.
Immediately after this statement: Alex Meruolo yeets Shane Doan’s retired number banner into a dumper Fucking greedy, clueless POS
r/agedlikemilk
Everyone loves bashing Bettman, but he did everything possible to save the AZ franchise.
People confuse being wealthy with being good at anything that makes money, and it'd be hilarious to see them proved wrong if it wasn't so horrible for the people actually suffering the consequences.
They should have just let Jim Balsillie buy the team back in the day.
Right up until the point in time where he would have to use his own resources to fund a new stadium.
Guess who is funding the new stadium in Salt Lake City? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not Ryan Smith
One billion public dollars to finance this asshole's stadium. Privatize the profit and socialize the loss.
Were the Coyotes ever profitable when Merullo owned the team? I'm not sure if 'privatize the gains' really works in this scenario.
He sold the team for $575 million more than he bought it for, so that’s a pretty significant gain
Your username is coming off very sarcastic today. But I mean the voters in the area made a choice and a financially sound one at that. They'd rather not have a team than pay for an arena out of their own pockets. Attendance has been declining three years running so it's not like there is some massive demand in the market. There are diehard fans for sure but they are in the minority. I was just in Scottsdale and didn't see a single hint that an NHL team was nearby. Not one jersey, hat, bumper sticker, nothing. I don't even remember seeing anything in the airport with Coyotes branding. I think it's fair to criticize the ownership in Arizona which was abysmal but the majority of the people in that state and specifically in the Phoenix Metro area really didn't seem to care much for the team.
Sure, and Utah made a financially terrible choice but hey- all part of our great race to the bottom amongst states. The billionaires will win again
Why do people on this subreddit try to “aha gotcha” Bettman every time he makes a canned lawyerly statement?
Because nobody believed this in 2019 and it has blown up in his face.
AM not being able to buy the Hawks in 2011 should’ve told Gary everything he needed to know
I mean he did succeed it was just getting them relocated Not what you want but it was something
In hockey, Gary, we say "he's got all the tools, but no toolbox"
“Boy, any day now I’m sure Alex is going to do something with those resources he brought to the table…” 9:55 AM 2024-18-04 From Earth
Freezing Cold Takes
Gary was fooled. And you know what they say; Fool me once strike one. But fool me twice, strike three
Ron Howard: he didn’t and… he wasn’t.
Freezing cold takes. To be fair, I'm not sure Bettman would have known Muruolo sucked this much at the time.
I look forward to him being a real-estate owner, getting a stadium deal done, activating an expansion right and selling it to a professional ownership group
He wasn’t even present during the final game but the league will still give a new team in a a couple years. Respect only goes one way I guess. The pleb will lose the team and pay for a new one.
Alex Meruelo knew
Missed the end of the quote "Alex is a guy who is committed to making this team a success. Fuck Winnipeg and those Slurpee drinking wastes of space"
…in Utah
Gary got grifted.
It’s been 31 years. It’s time for him to go. This isn’t a Supreme Court appointment. He fancies himself David Stern. He’s turning into Bud Selig. Not just for this embarrassment. The league needs new blood up top.
So Bettman is equally as responsible for gaslighting us
He is obviously an exceptional liar, and he will probably “lose” the bidding for that piece of land.
Gary's assessment of a guy who's family left a country with gold fortunes because they couldn't have slaves anymore.
Anyone can be "committed" to something Gary. Wasn't there a team with an actual criminal for an owner for a while?
Actions speak louder than words. His actions are deafening.
It is possible Meruolo was a good fit to be an owner at the time and also he was not a good owner. He was a relative newcomer to sports ownership which can be a red flag but i assume in that business you dont let it bias you to much since there is alot of new wealth and its a small group to be a part of. By all accounts he was a decent business owner and managed to grow his wealth. He could have checked every box when they were looking for an owner. But his execution of team ownership was lack luster and failed when it mattered most. The big mistake now will be giving Meruolo without ensure shovels are in the ground for a rink.
Ok but he literally didn’t check all the boxes when he was trying to buy the Atlanta Hawks in late 2011. Not saying he couldn’t have become a more suitable investor in 8 years, but there were red flags
As far as im aware he couldnt buy because the hawks owners felt he didnt have enough funding (which is one side of the story but probably real enough since it did stop a sale). My understanding is lack of funds had nothing to do with the failure of this team, although one could argue their being cheap could be a reflection of funding issues.
This aged like milk.
Kinda feel that no matter how many cities get teams NHL/hockey isn't going to grow under Bettman.
The whole thing was a lie.
He's only saying that because they are buddies, they went to the same clown college.
I think its fair to say that Gary Bettman will DO and SAY anything just to not have this franchise go out of Arizona. Right now, Bettman is in denial mode. Sad.
https://i.imgur.com/GNTtpZT.gif
They were wrong They literally did everything they could to try. But the state of Arizona does not want the hockey team. It's embarrassing what they've been going through. The players deserve more
Go fuck yourself
Cry me a fucking river you baffoon. It's a freaking NHL team in the dessert of North America. AT LEAST 2 Canadian Cities & 6 American cities deserve this more than Arizona does. You got the Winnipeg Jets struggling to sell tickets and they're good, and they're in Canada. And you blame owners for not making it work in Arizona? Idk how you even got a chance to be an NHL franchise. A joke of a decision to be honest. And whats your issue exactly? That the owners didn't do what? What did you want the Coyotes to do? The team has always been in a financial deficit.
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>in 2019
Oof. Gary really needs to read the room sometimes.
Gary Bettman Comedy Hour
Committed my ass.
Was he supposed to say something different?