Welcome To 2020

Well I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year’s Eve; I spent my evening organizing my collection. I have a drawer that is a card collect-all. Whenever I receive cards, they go in to the drawer until I have time to go through them. To let you know how bad my collect-all drawer was, I had cards from my COMC Spring sale still sitting in there. Yes, I was that far behind.

Last night I got through most of the cards, there is still a Monsters from Hell Kickstarter set that I need to go through and a handful of NBA cards and then I will be all caught up. Today’s card comes from the drawer. 

Today is the NHL’s Winter Classic so let's go with one of the few NHL cards in my collection, a 2012-13 Panini Limited Net Assets.

The back of the card talks about the 2011 NHL All-Star Skills Competition and the net is described as “event used” so I figured the net was probably from the competition, which is fine.

A Final Close To The Phoenix Coyotes Drama?

Last year I wrote up a post about the Phoenix Coyotes where I contemplated the future of the team. At the time the NHL was working on a deal with Matthew Hulsizer which appeared to be in jeopardy due to the interference of a local watchdog group (the Goldwater Institute) who felt that his offer was relying too heavily on a payment to Hulsizer from the City of Glendale. That deal eventually fell thru when the City of Glendale failed to sell enough bonds to cover the required $100 million payout to Hulsizer. This led to Hulsizer withdrawing his offer by the summer and the NHL was left holding the team looking for either a new deal with a potential buyer or the possibility of a move to Winnipeg, which has since picked up the ex-Atlanta Thrashers and renamed the Winnipeg Jets.

Fast forward to this spring and the NHL has announced that a tentative deal has been worked out between the NHL and former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison. Now it is a waiting game while the City of Glendale works out a deal regarding the lease of Jobbing.com Arena (where the Coyotes play). The Goldwater Institute is still watching the situation to ensure that Glendale will not be required to put up any money as part of the purchase.

The Glendale City Council is set to have a private meeting next week but as of this morning they have not added anything regarding the Coyotes to their public agenda. The City is also dealing with a potential lawsuit from the Cardinals regarding parking spots but that is another story.

If things fall thru once again expect to see the NHL step up the talk of relocation. While Winnipeg has been satisfied another city has suddenly become a possibility, Quebec City. Quebec lost the Nordiques to Colorado back in 1995 and has been hoping to replace the team. A couple of months ago the City of Quebec announced that they will begin construction of an 18,000-seat arena in hope of eventually landing an NHL team. Construction will begin in September 2012 and is expected to be completed in 2015 and will cost $400 million. Hamilton is still considered for a possible relocation too but because of the close proximity to Buffalo and Toronto the NHL will have to take that in to consideration. Additional relocations include a second team in Toronto (they even have a name already- Toronto Legacy), Seattle and Las Vegas.

So as the Coyotes get ready to play the LA Kings in the Western Conference Finals, the closest the team (NHL Jets/Coyotes) has ever gotten to the Stanley Cup Finals, the soap opera seems to finally be coming to a close.

What Is The Story With The Phoenix Coyotes?

Being in the Phoenix area I get a court side (or rink side in this case) seat as to the soap opera that has become the Phoenix Coyotes. Since coming to the Valley of the Sun the Coyotes started out on a good note making it to the playoffs 5 times in the first 6 years but then a dry patch hit missing the playoffs for 7 straight seasons (counting the lockout season) before the return of the White Out last season when the team actually hit 50 wins and 107 points.

But I digress to the soap opera storyline that has been prominent in local newspapers as of recent years. First there were the misadventures of owner Jerry Moyer when he intentionally filed bankruptcy merely hours before the NHL made an offer to purchase the team from him in 2009. His reasoning, which backfired, was to file bankruptcy and allow billionaire Jim Balsille to purchase the team out of bankruptcy and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario. You see, Balsille is disliked by the NHL which has thwarted his attempts to purchase teams and move them to Hamilton in the past. So the NHL has owned the team since September 2009 and has attempted to find buyers with little luck until recently when Matthew Hulsizer made an offer. Part of the offer required the City of Glendale (where the Coyotes play) to make a $100 million payment to Hulsizer which he would in turn use as part of the payment to the NHL. The city planned on using bonds to accrue the cash to make the payment but a public watchdog group (the Goldwater Institute) has publicly denounced the bonds and urged citizens to not purchase them because the original reports detailing how the city would recoup the money to pay off the bonds was skewed and there was no way the City of Glendale could cover the repayment of the bonds.

Confused yet?

OK, so now we stand in a situation where the NHL was expecting to sell the team to Hulsizer, who was expecting the City of Glendale to foot a portion of the purchase price, but has now stalled because the bonds are not being sold. The NHL is now working with the watchdog group (Goldwater Institute) to try and work out a deal to where the bonds can be sold thus allowing the sale of the team to go through. To muddy up the situation, the City of Glendale will be filing a lawsuit against the Goldwater Institute Monday morning stating that if the team leaves the city then Glendale will lose more than half a billion dollars.

The kicker of the whole dealio is that if the sale does not go through with Hulsizer then the NHL plans on relocating the team. Where you ask? Why none other than Winnipeg, Manitoba. That is right, the NHL in all its wisdom plans on moving the Phoenix Coyotes to Winnipeg, where the team was located as the Winnipeg Jets before moving to Phoenix in 1996. The Jets moved to Phoenix initially because of financial trouble, the inability to find qualified buyers who wanted to keep the team in Winnipeg and because the city was the smallest market in the NHL. The NHL had publicly questioned whether Winnipeg could even support an NHL team in 1996. Has something changed in 15 years or is the NHL gone bonkers?