President Says Phoenix Coyotes Have To Win!

Author: Scott Taylor

November 6, 2009

Scott Taylor's E-Take is sponsored every Friday by Manitoba Harvest, the global leader in hemp foods & oils, and your online source for natural, sustainable and certified organic hemp food products. www.manitobaharvest.com.

In Canada, there are folks who believe that the people running the Phoenix Coyotes are idiots.  It’s not so much the decision by the NHL back in 1996 to put a team in Phoenix (there’s your village idiot) that was idiotic, but the actual people asked to run a hockey franchise in the desert who are being ridiculed.

That, of course, is typical, especially of Canadian newspaper columnists in recent months, but it’s still patently absurd.  Those charged with running that franchise are experienced hockey people who know exactly what has to happen in Phoenix in order to give the Coyotes franchise even the slightest chance to break even and survive.  They are neither idiotic, nor crazy.  They’re hockey people who have been placed in an impossible situation in the most non-traditional of non-traditional markets.

“We have to win,” said Coyotes president Doug Moss the other day.  “People in Canada say we don’t deserve to have a franchise here, but that’s absolutely wrong.  The NHL will work here, but you have to give your fans something to cheer about.  People in Toronto will support hockey win or lose and, yeah, that’s probably true in most Canadian markets, but here, you have to win, at least occasionally.  We haven’t had a winner in seven years.  There’s no doubt in my mind that in this market, you’d better win a little bit or people will find other things to do.”

Doug Moss is a hockey survivor.  The guy who was at the helm of the International Hockey League when it closed up shop and allowed its most successful teams to join the American Hockey League, Moss left the defunct IHL and joined the Anaheim Ducks.  After a year with the Ducks, he was named president and CEO of the Coyotes.  He has been in Phoenix since December of 2002.  He has never seen his hockey team in the playoffs. 

Now, let’s not pull any punches here.  It would be easy to blame Moss for the problem he, himself, faces, but he had a completely different dynamic with which to deal.  No other team in sport had to face this: His head coach, Wayne Gretzky, was also a minority owner of the team.  When the coach is your boss, and he’s not a very good coach, it’s extremely difficult to fire the owner/coach. 

“I don’t know whether Wayne was a good coach or a great coach or a bad coach, I’m not going there,” said Moss, who also happens to be a big supporter of Winnipeg as a hockey market and a great admirer of Moose President Mark Chipman.  “What I do know is that Dave Tippett, the man coaching our hockey team now, is a very good coach who already has this team winning.  If we continue to play as we’ve been playing, we’ll be fine, I think.

“Listen, anybody who says hockey can’t work here is flat-out wrong.  Look at the way things have gone in other NHL markets.  A few years ago, nobody went to games in Washington, Chicago or Pittsburgh.  Heck, Pittsburgh was in bankruptcy twice and nobody said Pittsburgh was a bad hockey market.  All three of those teams needed to win.  Now all three markets are considered great hockey markets because all three teams win.  Fans will come here as long as we provide, fun, entertaining, winning hockey.”

Having a couple of stars wouldn’t hurt either.  Unfortunately, there is no Alexander Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin available right now.

In the meantime, Moss is fully aware of all the empty seats in jobing.com Arena.  After all, he watched his team’s 3-2 shootout win over Anaheim last Saturday night, a win that gave the Coyotes a 9-4-0 record and put them in second place in the Pacific Division, but it was a win earned in front of a tiny announced crowd of only 6,495.  He also watched his team lose 5-3 to Los Angeles on Monday night in front of only 5,585, the smallest crowd in Coyotes history. 

Moss will be the first to tell you that selling tickets isn’t easy.  But he also doesn’t think the empty seats can be attributed simply to the contention that people in Phoenix don’t like the game of hockey.  He firmly believes that this year’s dearth of ticket buyers is a direct result of the bankruptcy case that has followed this franchise around like the black plague.  “It wasn’t until six weeks ago that people actually knew we’d be here this year,” Moss said.  “It’s pretty hard to sell tickets when you don’t know whether you’ll be in Phoenix or Hamilton.  Not until (suitor Jim) Balsillie said he was going to play the 2009-2010 schedule in Phoenix were any of us certain that we’d be here this year.  But lately, with the team winning games, fans have been responding.  Just like a lot of American cities, we have economic issues (8.6 per cent unemployment) we have to deal with, but we’ve made it pretty affordable for hockey fans.  If we can give them a winning team, our building will start to fill up.”

You can call Doug Moss a dreamer if you like, but he’s a lifetime hockey man who is convinced that the NHL will work in Phoenix.  The real question now is: Is there a wealthy person anywhere in the world who would want to buy this team from the NHL and keep it in the desert?

When that question is answered, only then will we know if Doug Moss – who I can assure you is not a lunatic -- is on the right track.
 

« Back