History, Will Teach Us Nothing
My apologies to Sting.
The remarkable issue from last night’s game against the Ottawa Senators is not the fact the Coyotes have a four game winning streak, second one of the season, or that they finally beat the Senators (the last time coming in 2002), or that they are six games above .500 (sixth in the conference), or even the fact that this time last year they were a measly 13-14-2. No, it’s not any of those things.
What we had was that a team that has been in financial trouble twice in their history, playing against another that has had the same misfortune.
Can you guess which one is which?
Well, if you are aware of history (see the link above – whether the song fits, I don’t care, I just liked it), the Ottawa Senators, as a hockey franchise has been around a long time. Sure, the new version was the result of expansion (some say southern) of 1992 that brought the Tampa Bay Lightning into the NHL at the same time. However, the Ottawa Senators has been around for many, many decades.
Starting with the NHL in its inception, as history will tell us, that the Senators were around long before the NHL was a figment of anyone’s imagination; the Ottawa Senators helped found the league back in 1917. They were a pretty successful franchise having won multiple Stanley Cups between 1918 – 1927.
Then, disaster struck. In the first expansion to the United States, coupled with an economic depression, the Ottawa Senators could not turn a profit and ended up closing the team in 1934, and would not be resurrected until 1992.
The economic conditions still did not improve, even with the newly formed Senators. The Senators were a very competitive team, but then it turns out that they filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. It looks like they were having attendance issues then as well. It didn’t matter if the team was winning or losing, people just didn’t want to come see the Senators play. The team was a complete financial mess.
Eugene Melnyk rescued the team by purchasing them soon after the club entered bankruptcy, and the links between these two franchises, the Senators and the Coyotes, continue to grow thicker.
Jim Balsillie, the Canadian businessman who wanted to uproot the Coyotes and transport them to Canada, had thoughts about the Ottawa Senators as well. We learned this summer that Balsillie tried the same tactics that he used with the Coyotes with the Senators. Eugene Melnyk felt then that Balsillie was not conducting himself properly noting,
“And I told him right off the bat that I thought it was … that it’s not the way you go about things. There’s a professional way. You meet other owners, you get to know the business, but you don’t … I don’t think you knock the door down to try to get a team.
“I think the way they have gone about it has got to be the most bizarre way of trying to enter professional sports.”
quoted in The Star
So, what happened? Four years later, the Senators went to the Stanley Cup Finals only to lose in five games to the Anaheim Ducks. Could that happen here? Not sure, but anything is possible. The best part is the Coyotes have been playing excellent hockey and may be the NHL’s best kept secret.
What still persists is the perception that the market does not work down here. Well, it initially didn’t work in Ottawa either, but that team didn’t move anywhere. It would have been extra painful if it had. For some reason though, the critics don’t seem remember those times, the time when the Canadiens were struggling, the Senators, the Canucks, and so on and so on.
When the Coyotes arrived here, they were in the playoffs, the building was full (even when it wasn’t built very well for hockey), and people had a buzz about the team. Now? Losing breeds contempt and the casual fans don’t want to be jilted again. Couple that with a horrible economy that Arizona has, the situation gets even more bleak.
Canada lost two of their teams to the lower 48, the Quebec Nordiques and the Winnipeg Jets. Now, with a franchise that had history, that had a renewal, it looked very bleak and it could have changed the business of hockey. Commissioner Gary Bettman didn’t wrangle the Ottawa Senators from the market, he waited until the situation resolved itself. With Melnyk, it had.
These articles north of the border documenting the attendance woes of the Coyotes franchise doesn’t help matters in changing the perception (of course, fans filling the building would help more). What’s lacking down here is an owner because thanks to Balsillie and company, they wrecked what was already a challenging market. The fans need to know that they are staying here and the only way to insure that is to have an owner to purchase the team with that commitment in mind.
The best thing that the players can do is to continue winning hockey games.
