Post by bettmanblows on Oct 12, 2009 19:25:33 GMT -5
Like Desert Wanderers, Coyotes Endure Disarray
By KAREN CROUSE
Published: October 11, 2009
GLENDALE, Ariz. — After another discouraging day, the flesh-and-bones pillar of the property sat in a wood-paneled dressing room with his head bowed. The clock is ticking on this transplanted Arizonan, Shane Doan, and the other tenants of 9400 West Maryland Ave., who wake up most mornings to a brilliant sun partly eclipsed by clouds as black as ink.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
Heather Schroeder and Larry Halliday watched a Coyotes game at a Scottsdale bar. Both have attended the team’s bankruptcy hearings.
If it happens on ice and it involves hitting and scoring, The Times Slap Shot blog is on it.
Like countless others in the metropolitan Phoenix area, one of the hardest hit in the country by the economic and housing crisis, they fear having to walk away from their dream home, for them a 77-bathroom, 88-luxury-loft palace on 75 acres of former farmland.
Almost six years after the Coyotes moved into Jobing.Com Arena, the promise of stability and success is looking more and more like a mirage. The franchise was dragged through bankruptcy court this summer. A week before the start of the season, Judge Redfield T. Baum rejected one offer to buy the team, from a business mogul intent on moving the franchise to Canada, and rejected another from the N.H.L..
For now the Coyotes are being operated by the league, their future beyond this season on the thinnest of ice. The team, which lost $30 million last season, played its home opener Saturday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets in front of a capacity crowd of 17,532. Jobing.Com Arena was staged to look its best, with $180 seats discounted to $25 and seats in the upper reaches priced at $15.
The fans wore white, a playoff tradition the franchise introduced when it was based in Winnipeg. It was apt, given that every Coyotes game has the feel of a do-or-done contest.
“We’re caught in the perfect storm,” said Don Maloney, the Coyotes’ general manager. “The economy here is in very tough shape. The ownership situation is in disarray. And yet, I think we have a tremendous opportunity here. The question is, will we have enough time to show it?”
The Coyotes opened the season with two road victories, including a 3-0 win over the defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins. They are 2-2 going into their game Monday at San Jose after dropping a 2-0 decision to the Blue Jackets. They outshot Columbus by 36-19 but failed on seven power plays, including two five-on-three advantages.
Doan, a 14-year veteran who has been with the team since before it moved to Phoenix in 1996, hit the post twice on close-range scoring attempts. “Five-on-three, we’ve got to get one,” he said. “That’s unacceptable.”
There is so much about the Coyotes’ situation that is undesirable, starting with their lease, which requires them to pay a parking fee of $2.70 per ticket to the city of Glendale.
The arena, the Coyotes’ home since 2003, is a 31-mile drive from the team’s practice facility in Scottsdale, where most of the players and many of the season-ticket holders live. On weeknights, the drive is the commuting equivalent of the neutral-zone trap, with so much traffic it burns the fans’ gas and good will in equal measures.
“I really think the biggest problem is the arena is so hard to get to because of the traffic,” said Jim Adams, a longtime season-ticket holder.
After 12 seasons of buying 20-game packages, Adams and two friends did not renew their seats this season. They had seats near center ice, in the lower bowl, and they enjoyed their guys’ nights out. “One guy had to choose between keeping Cardinals tickets or Coyotes tickets, and he chose the Cardinals,” Adams said, referring to the Super Bowl runners-up, who needed 24-hour extensions to sell out two home games this season to satisfy the N.F.L.’s blackout rules for television. “The other said, ‘Gary Bettman’s not getting another dime out of me.’ ”
Bettman, the N.H.L. commissioner, chose to attend the Florida Panthers’ home opener Saturday over the Coyotes’ game, and Adams was not there, either. He used the $1,300 he would have spent on hockey tickets to buy a golf membership and season tickets to Arizona State’s men’s basketball.
“So many fans have been scared away by the bankruptcy,” said Heather Schroeder, the president of the Coyotes Booster Club.
Schroeder, 39, has rescued dogs and cats from the pound, and now she is doing what she can to save the Coyotes. Since spring, the downtown Phoenix courthouse has been Schroeder’s office. Unemployed for the last several months, she attended the bankruptcy hearings faithfully, then went home at night and pored over legal documents related to the case on the Internet. She compared notes with another season-ticket holder and regular court attendee, Larry Halliday, who was laid off a year ago from his job in semiconductor sales.
“Not having a job has been a sad blessing,” Schroeder said. Asked what she learned from all her research, she said: “That everything’s up for interpretation. Larry and I read all the same documents, and we disagree on how to interpret the information.” She added, “One thing we did find out from all our reading is that Jerry Bruckheimer inquired about buying the team.”
Bruckheimer, a film and television producer, attended college at Arizona. The Coyotes could do worse. Asked in an interview several years ago to describe his producing philosophy, he said, “You hire the right guys because they are better than you.”
It was a philosophy followed by neither Jerry Moyes, a trucking magnate who bought the team in 2005, nor Wayne Gretzky, a managing partner who assumed the head coaching duties before the 2005-6 season. They each placed cronies in positions of power, which contributed to the team’s playoff drought reaching six seasons. Gretzky resigned as the coach a week before the start of the season after his compensation was debated in court. Dave Tippett was hired as his replacement.
Adams said: “Shane Doan’s the only real hero here. I like him so much I’d rather see him leave and go somewhere else where he can be successful.”
Doan, whose distinguishing features are a jaw as square as a Zamboni, a genuine decency and clockwork consistency, said, “I want to win here.”
He was raised on a horse ranch in Halkirk, Alberta, a town with a population of 150, and says he is thrilled that his four children are growing up similarly, with horses on a ranch, albeit in the middle of a metropolitan area of well over three million residents.
Over the summer, Doan was blindsided by his 7-year-old son, Joshua, who asked him plaintively, “Are we going to have to leave?”
Joshua’s anxiety, which he has passed on to his oldest sibling, 11-year-old Grace, is a reminder to Doan that he and the other Coyotes are the fortunate ones. They can step on a sheet of ice anywhere and feel at home. The rink is their sanctuary.
The family members who cannot bear the thought of leaving and the fans who do not want to see them to go are more powerless.
Since he entered the N.H.L., Doan has inscribed his hockey sticks with “29:11.” It is a reference to a biblical passage from Jeremiah that resonates more now than ever: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/sports/hockey/12coyotes.html?ref=hockey