Yesterday in deepest Arizona the Glendale city council voted to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix.   The taxpayers woke up to find that they might be on the hook for $25 million dollars should the sale of the Yotes go south.  This means of course according to Bill Daly that the move to Winnipeg looks dead in the water.

Of course the question being what happens if Phoenix miss the playoffs next season? Is the casual fan base really going to get behind the team to make it profit-worthy?

or is it time to cut losses and move now?

It has long been acknowledged by many in the Media that Bettman’s strategy to move hockey into the American South has been a failure and now it is time to start moving teams north to more hockey based markets, eg.. Winnipeg, Quebec City, Southern Ontario…. maybe even Seattle, Portland?

Yet Writing an opinion which involves moving one hockey team to another city is an easy notion to write but in reality it is a difficult process and ultimately hurts someone.  Because even moving the Coyotes or the Thrashers, Panthers, Predators and BlueJackets will leave dedicated hockey fans without a team and sometimes that is forgotten about.

But the fact still remains that hockey deserves to be given a chance once again in main hockey areas,  anyone doubting the passion of Canadian hockey fans need to go re-watch the Olympics to see the love of the game.   There was probably good reason at the time for Bettman and the NHL to try to expand the hockey market in new American cities, but the experiment has deemed to not work, so why not give a opportunity to the cities that lost their hockey teams in the early 90′s.

Time to give Canada more than just 6 teams, I believe most people would think that the country that lives and breathes the game deserves a greater share of the teams but of course whether this happens or not is ultimately not down to fan support  but to money, which is a crying shame.

For the Jets…

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