"It should come with an air sickness bag, this whole saga," Burke said. "It's just ridiculous that a city of 6 million people is going to fold and move to a city with 1.5 or whatever Salt Lake City has … so we're going to give up a marketplace of 6 million people for a marketplace of 1.5 million people where they've never had pro hockey other than the IHL and some AHL teams that were there.
"OK, does that make sense to anyone else? … It doesn't to me. Make this guy sell the team, get a new team in the right location and keep playing."
via azcentral
"We're going to give up a marketplace of 6 million people for a marketplace of 1.5 million people where they've never had pro-hockey ... that make sense to anyone else?"@Burkie2020 on potential downsides of the #Yotes move to Salt Lake City with @RealKyper & @jtbourne. pic.twitter.com/wuueoq1yeL
— Sportsnet 590 The FAN (@FAN590) April 15, 2024
Make this guy sell the team, get a new team in the right location and keep playing.
As though this hasn't been attempted already. Maybe it's just come time to admit, the "right location" isn't in Arizona.
Maybe Burke is upset because he enjoyed going out and partying down there - I know for a fact the visiting players did.
The problem is, NHL owners have somehow come to the conclusion that, once they own a team, they shouldn't ever have to pay another nickel for anything, and can just watch the money come in. The Yotes were just a football that got kicked around Phoenix for 27 years. One guy moved them out to Glendale, not bkz it was a better location by ANY metric, but because he wanted to gin up traffic at his new mall. The current guy just kept making up stories about this new, awesome rink that the tax payers were going to buy him, but it never got past the computer-rendered drawing of "a hockey rink" with no place to build it.
The bottom line is, the NHL needs to stop handing out franchises to the first person to come along with a big fat check.
Also, I'd go out partying with Brian Burke any day of the week.
Burkie for commish!I'd love it if this guy had a Coach's Corner-style segment on Hockey Night.
Btw if you haven't seen the "Hey Burkie" series, it's well worth a watch.
He's not entirely wrong. The league is giving up the #11 TV market in the nation for the #27. That's going to hurt the broadcast contracts and advertisers, and thus the owners. Ok, maybe it didn't work in AZ but the value to the TV contracts is the whole reason they stuck it out as long as they did and now they're just abandoning that? Houston and Atlanta are the next largest markets without a team (6 & 7 respectively). Even Cleveland (19) or Portland (23) feel like they could be a better location than SLC from that aspect anyway.
Is the league is getting an expansion fee or moving fee out of this? Or are they just desperate to have an enthusiastic owner and skate out of any outstanding debts and obligations in Phoenix?
Based on what I've seen:
They are potentially getting an expansion fee out of it BUT they have to use that money to buy the Coyotes from the current owner.
If the current owner can get a building in the next 5 years he can buy it back. That's when the owners would get to divide up the sale price.
Population alone is not a good argument or Atlanta and Houston would be the desired destinations.
The league wants solid owners who they can work with. I'm convinced that the Atlanta situation was more about getter those owners out of the league. They just couldn't find a local buyer quick enough.
The reason SLC was chosen is because they had a strong owner AND had an arena ready to play in this fall. It probably helped that it was in the same time zone and wouldn't mess up division alignments.
I really really get sick of the "losing money" argument. Every sale of a franchise has made a massive profit. It's the equivalent of saying you are losing money on your home because you keep doing maintenance while the value of the house keeps going up. The Coyotes franchise is reportedly selling for $1B. I'll bet the profit made more than offsets the operating costs.
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