Does the NHL vet its owners?



I would like to write this as fiction. I don't know how you'd make it believable if you wrote it as a farce. I want to see the city of Glendale open the doors to the arena when the players show up for a morning skate. I want the ownership of the team to figure out where to move the game. Or put up a sign that says the game is not going to happen and then a picture of UnclePennybags with his pockets on it. It will not happen, but it is what I want.

The Arizona Coyotes may be locked out of their building on December 20th, according to last night's word. The Yotes owe the state of Arizona over a million dollars in taxes and fees.

It's startling that a sports franchise should have no more than 1.5 million dollars. It is a pittance. The Yotes are worth a lot of money. Alex Mureulo bought them for $300 million. He can't float this.

He and his group couldn't find the couch- change that would have kept these tax bills from becoming public and put yet another embarrassment on the team and league. How did this group that was close to being in serious trouble get approved by the NHL to buy the team? When Meruelo bought the team, the NHL asked how much money he had, but did he get anything more than a "Don't worry about it" response?

The answer is the same as always when talking about this organization. It is the NHL.

The latest ownership group has tried to stick its ass out of the car that has been overturned for more than a decade. The team hasn't improved, the city of Glendale kicked its ass out after this season, and they're apparently horrible people to work for. They only had one card in their wallet.

How did they pass the NHL test? The answer is likely that the NHL didn't administer any kind of test, or that the league and IceArizona will use the Pandemic as an excuse. The Yotes were drawing 18k a game before the epidemic. How much loss can the ownership group take on would have been a proper vetting. The league just took its word for it.

You can see how this will end. The Yotes will either be paid a couple of million by the league or they will be looking for a way out of Arizona. For the second time, the league will have to take control of the organization and not look for an ownership group to take the team somewhere it has a chance of being successful.

It was 10 years ago that the whole kabuki theater for the bewildered started. I have met a few good hockey fans in Arizona. There are good hockey fans in both Bangor and Topeka. They don't get a team. Your owners can't even cover 1.5 million dollars, that's it. Ring the bell and wave the white flag. Quebec City, Houston, whatever. Gary Bettman has to admit that he was wrong.

It was Kerr-fect!

Sam Kerr is the best player in women's soccer. I only need to show you the goal to prove it. She might be playing linebacker in her free time, too, as she went all Mike Curtis on this fool.

It's rare that we get to see a field invader get what they deserve, and this one seems especially ripe for the kind of tackle that he got, though Kerr should have gotten a thank you from the refs, but instead received a yellow card. I don't know anything about this fuckstick and I'm not going to give him the benefit of finding out. This could be the place for a rant about social media making him think that it was worth committing this crime, and that is what it is, because he thought enough people were paying attention to his stream to make it worth it. Let's not discuss that for now.

Let's be happy that his intentions weren't any more menacing than just calling attention to himself, whether or not he was mocking the event itself. Let's be happy that he got what he wanted.

It was a shame he got up, but you get the feeling that Kerr could have laid him out. If you don't have to, never piss off an Australian. I think he ran off because he was embarrassed so much that he never expected to be. It feels like he is the type of guy who never thought a woman could lay him out, and now will struggle to come to terms with that. So good.

Kerr catches Jacob Trouba flush with his chest, keeps his arms down, and doesn't leave his feet, so this is textbook. NHL, use this as your example.