50 Years Ago Tonight

November 1, 1959 is the date of my first and grandest hockey memory.

I was all of 7 years old and on this Sunday school night I was in bed with my radio tuned to a New York Rangers hockey game. The Rangers were playing the Stanley Cup Champion Montreal Canadians and I had recently discovered hockey on radio. It was my bed time but I’m sure I intended to listen for at least a period. Jim Gordon, who became all-time favorite hockey announcer, was calling the game.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Andy Bathgate, the star of the New York Rangers lifted a backhand shot into the unprotected face of Montreal goaltender Jacques Plante. Plante was badly cut and left the ice for repairs. In this era, National League teams only carried one goaltender. If a netminder was injured, the game was stopped until the player could be stitched up. If the goaltender could not continue, a house goaltender (usually an amateur player) or a team trainer would be pressed into action.

Plante was hockey’s premier goaltender of the 1950s. He was coming off his 4th straight Stanley Cup championship (heading towards his 5th) and his play had revolutionized the game. He was also eccentric and moody. And he was about to change the game in a way he could never imagine.

Plante had been practicing with a mask and had vowed to start wearing it in games. Montreal coach Toe Blake was adamantly opposed to Plante’s mask. On this night though, Plante said he would not return to the game without his protective mask. Blake objected, but eventually relented. Jacques Plante was about to become the first goaltender to wear a full face mask in a National Hockey League game.

Back in my bedroom, I was listening intently as Gordon was talking about the historical significance of what was happening. I didn’t know that much about hockey or masks but I did know enough to realize that the first goaltender ever to wear a mask in a game was a big deal. Big enough to yell to my dad that he need to come upstairs right away.

My father loved hockey. He grew up in Brooklyn and played high school hockey. He was also a short track speed skater and had won a number of medals in Sliver Skates competition at Madison Square Garden. His love of hockey is how I was exposed to the game at such a young age and came to be such a passionate fan.

Dad came up and sat on the end of my bed as we listened to history being made. My father was a big talker and what I remember is that on this night is how quiet he was. Reflecting back, I know that it surely was important.

Plante, repaired with 7 stitches and still wearing his bloody jersey came back and played. And he played well. The Canadians built a 3-0 lead and long after I fell asleep; they gave up a meaningless goal to Camille Henry. Hockey had been changed forever.

Simple flat face protectors soon gave away to oversized masks that protected much more of the head and throat area. Ultimately, the form fitting mask was phased out in favor of today’s helmet mask that covers the goaltenders entire head and allows them excellent vision through a caged eye opening.

Over the next 15 years, every goaltender in the league began to wear a mask. On April 7, 1974, Andy Brown was the last NHL goaltender to appear in a game without a mask. Now the thought of playing goal without a mask is incomprehensible.

At the time, I didn’t know enough about hockey to understand what this all meant or how it would change the game forever. But what I do remember is what I said to my father when Plante came back wearing the mask. “The Rangers (who were a very bad team in the late 1950s) are going to win for sure” or something close to that, I told my father. He replied, “I wouldn’t be so sure”.

Moyes Throws In The Towel

When Judge Tom tossed Jim Balsilie's bid for the Coyotes, the die was cast. If a potential suitor was not going to be allowed to buy and move the Coyotes, then the NHL would end up with the team. No one was about to bid against the league since the NHL would ultimately have to bless the new owners of the team.

So at the end of the day, Moyes cut his substantial losses and went home. If he had good legal counsel and got frank advice, he knew back in May that the bankruptcy and sale to Balsillie was a longshot. When you are looking at a $100MM haircut (on top of $100MM already sunk) and you have a certain Canadian gadfly ready to foot the legal bills, why not give it a shot?

He shot, and he missed. Hey, that's hockey.

There's a very pragmatic part of how the NHL has been funding the franchise. Technically, it's a secured loan to the "estate". The NHL has been fronting the cash but protected their interests by being a secured creditor. Translation? The costs of running the Coyotes until the sale is complete are being absorbed by the "estate". The money the league is spending for the franchise is partly to pay off the secured loans the league has been making to the team to keep the franchise operating. With the dollars available to Moyes dropping with each payroll, he finally decided to cut bait and close the deal.

So now, once a few more legal loose ends are cleaned up, the NHL will be the new owners of the Coyotes. And paying the bills with their money. Then the real sale process will take shape.

The anticipation is that the league wants to flip the franchise quickly. Most observers believe that the team will not have much of a chance of reversing attendance losses until new committed owners are in place.

But there are two issues yet to emerge. One is the asking price for the franchise. $140-150MM was a nice bankruptcy price. It was also the approximate price that Team Reinsdorf was willing to pay for the team in May. It may not be the league's asking price. And that could present a problem locating new owners. There's also a question about what the league's timeline for selling the team will look like.

I'd like to think that Gary Bettman and Bill Daly have been honest and forthright in their declarations that they intend to sell the team to owners who will keep the team in Phoenix. And they know full well that new owners will be looking at a minimum loss of $50MM before they can even think about righting the ship.

The last two warm weather teams to change hands were Nashville for $193MM and Tampa Bay at $200MM. Owners like to keep the price of teams inflated. A rising tide raises all ships, you know. We'll be curious to see if the league expects that kind of money for the troubled Coyotes or will be happy to recoup their $14o investment in the team..

Ice Edge Holdings continues to be a visible and aggressive suitor for the franchise. TV cameras were quick to pick up the ownership group sitting with Gary Bettman at Monday's Coyote-Ranger game. Ice Edge executives have an agreement in principal in place with the City of Glendale and seem to be trying to do things the right way. Unlike you know who.

The concern and caution is a) the asking price and b) the wherewithal of the group. If the NHL is content recouping their $140MM investment and Ice Edge has another $50-100MM ready for operating costs, they will be a strong contender to get the team. They could also be the only contender. It's expected that Jerry Reinsdorf and friends will reappear at some point and get in the bidding but that's not a sure thing. And while there may be others who will appreciate that the team can be purchased directly from the league without legal encumberments, there are no guarantees.

"Ice Edge isn't the only horse in the race," Daly wrote in an email yesterday to Sean Fitz-Gerald of The (Canadian) National Post. But Daly didn't name any other potential buyers.

It's also been reported that Wayne Gretzky isn't pleased that his interests haven't been addressed. That's unfortunate. While money is important, hockey's living legend deserves better treatment. Gretzky's approval is not required for the sale of the team to close but his interests go far beyond the dollars at stake. This is a fence that the league needs to mend and mend quicklky. With all other secured and unsecured creditors on board, his objections may not be enough to stop the deal.

So let the bankruptcy sale be closed and let the bidding begin. Soon.

The quicker something happens, and the sooner committed new owners are in place, the faster the NHL can look for a real turnaround for our home team.

And that can't happen soon enough.

Big Performances, Small Crowds

Under the best of circumstances, October hockey in Phoenix is a tough sell. The weather is still warmer here than it is in the dead of summer in most places. There's plenty of sports competition from the NFL Cardinals, two state universities and the coming NBA season. Not to mention the State Fair. And there's little hockey coverage or culture to generate incremental interest in the game.

So poor attendance at the Coyotes two home games this week was not surprising. But the crowds of 6,900 and 9,100 this week were lousy even by Arizona standards.

It's already brought out the vultures in the hockey press. Bloggers and journalists in established hockey markets and across Canada are already writing the obituary for the franchise. "A ruined market"..."dead team walking"...and "only a matter of time until the Coyotes move" are some of the headlines I've read in the last few days.

Well, not so fast.

Unless someone lives in Arizona, they cannot understand the damage that was done to the franchise this summer. There was no promotion of the team. There was no corporate sales season. Most of the ticket reps have quit and many professionals have left the organization. Their positions for the most part have gone unfilled.

Since the ownership of the team has not been settled, there has been little in the way of advertising or marketing. And what there has been is off target and not creating a ripple in the market. Publicity for the team has been OK but not extraordinary.

There are still a lot of loose ends here. Some things need to happen in short order for attendance to improve.

Winning can cover a lot of problems and the Coyotes continue to perform well on the ice. Last night they beat down the defending Eastern Conference Champion Boston Bruins 4-1 in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicates. That gives the team wins over San Jose, Pittsburgh and Boston in the first two weeks of the season. Those were three of the four best teams in the NHL last year. Phoenix gets a crack at the 4th, Detroit, on Thursday night. By any measure, a great start to the season and one that has the Coyotes on top of the Pacific Division.

And the Coyotes need to continue winning. It is non negotiable if the franchise's fortunes are going to turn. The team lacks star power. In many respects they are reminiscent of the 1996 Florida Panthers, a team of journeymen who played far better than the individual parts. Coach for a month Dave Tippett and his staff have done an outstanding job putting in a tight checking system and maximizing the assets on hand. Tippett and Don Maloney are the early leaders in any discussion for coach and manager of the year in the NHL.

The next thing that needs to happen is that the ownership situation needs to be settled. There is a perceived uncertainty in the community that is not going to go away until new owners are firmly in place.

The Ice Edge group continues to make their presence known. People inside and outside of the organization are whispering that what once seemed to be long shot bid to buy the team may be closer to reality than anticipated. Much closer than has been reported in the local press. Ice Edge already has a lease agreement in place with the City of Glendale.

There's also chatter that the Jerry Reinsdorf group may resurface once the NHL gains control of the situation. They have been keeping a low profile but that has been their modus operandi since first bidding for the team. They have access to the money and the connections necessary to purchase and manage the team.

The NHL is due back in Judge Tom's court next week for a hearing on many of the loose ends still hanging from the bankruptcy. It's expected the league will shortly file an amended bid that meets the court's criteria for purchasing the team. Then it's up to the NHL to flip the team as quickly as possible to new owners. Unless the league has gotten cold feet about the Phoenix market (and wants to take on the City of Glendale in court) a quick sale is anticipated. That will allow new owners to take over and make a strong statement that the team is staying in Arizona. This is a necessary component in rebuilding the fan base. Until the door is closed on potential relocation, questions will remain and business will suffer.

The optimist in me says that both will happen. The coaching staff is using the talent on hand as well as any team in the league. The defense is mobile and active. Adrian Aucoin is living up to his billing as a minutes-eater and is a solid confident player. Keith Yandle is showing big improvement over his rookie season. And Sami Lepisto, acquired from Washington for a 5th round draft choice, has been a pleasant surprise. Combined with tight checking, it's made life relatively easy for Ilya Bryzgalov. And Ilya has been up to the challenge, backstopping the Coyotes to the best goals allowed in the league.

It all seems so simple. Ice a winning team, install new owners and management and a renewed optimism, all in place in time for the Christmas selling season. And enough progress on and off the ice to make the turnstile count a footnote rather than the story. It can happen.

And yet, just a few weeks ago it seemed so far away.

0.984

If that's your body temperature, you are feeling perfectly normal.

If it’s your score on the big test, you feel pretty good.

And if it happens to be your goals allowed average, you’re on top of the world. That's just filthy. And right now, that’s Ilya Brzygalov’s goals allowed average

Very glossy stuff. The kind of goaltending that the franchise desperately needs to be successful this year. And make no mistake; Bryz is the most important member of the Phoenix Coyotes. That's due in large part to him being the most variable part of the Coyotes equation.

Ilya is a lot like the little girl with the curl. When he's good, he can be very, very good. And when he's bad, he can be just brutal.

And so far this year he has been very, very good. 4 goals allowed in 4+ games including shutouts at Pittsburgh and San Jose. That is an impressive body of work. Ilya is working behind the tight checking system that Dave Tippett and Ulf Samuelsson have instituted. He also has the benefit of a deep and experienced defense in front of him. But he’s also been on top of his game with smart and consistent positioning complimenting his always great athleticism.

That’s the way it will need to be in Phoenix this year. Fire wagon hockey is a recipe for failure for this team. While there is much hope that young players will improve as the year goes on, there’s not much chance the Coyotes will score a lot of goals this year. 8-4 games are not in the best interests of the franchise.

When Bryz first arrived in Phoenix in 2007, he went on a tear that propelled the Coyotes into playoff contention. His first two months in the desert was some of the best goaltending this franchise has seen. It was enough to earn him a 3 year $12MM contract. And it gave the franchise a backbone it had lacked since Nik Khabibulin had walked three years earlier.

It was a streak reminiscent of the 2006 playoffs, when he carried the Mighty Ducks through a couple of rounds after replacing JS Giguere in the nets.

Much like the clock striking midnight in 2006, Bryz faltered down the stretch in 2008. And last year he had a real up and down season. More down than up. He was so bad that hockey's nicest man, Wayne Gretzky, pulled him from one game after just two shots (and two goals) and several times called him out in public. On a team with a small margin for error, Bryzgalov did not look like a franchise goaltender on way too many nights.

Long before I started the WHX, I was talking about the team's goaltending situation on talk radio and other message boards. I've never been comfortable with Bryz. Some nights he looks like a million bucks. Other nights, you were lucky to get change for your dollar. That kind of goaltending usually means the only action you will be seeing in April is a tee time.

Don Maloney also wavered in his faith. Last year at the trade deadline, a deal that would have sent Bryz to Philadelphia was seriously discussed. In fact, one NHL team official told me that the only thing that kept it from happening was the Flyers perennial salary cap problems. That may or may not be true but the fact is that the Coyotes surely had second thoughts about their franchise goaltender.

So for better or worse, Bryz is back in Phoenix this year. And so far, it’s for the better. Way better. No one expects his goals allowed average to stay so low. Or his save percentage so high. But what would be reasonable to expect is that he keep the Coyotes in the majority of the 65 or so games he will play this year. That’s what a $4MM goaltender should be able to deliver.

And if he does, he’ll keep the Coyotes in a playoff race that they desperately need to be a part of.

Number 5 With A Bullett!

TSN, The Canadian ESPN, has the Coyotes ranked as 5th in the NHL in their current power rankings. Wow!

(OK, a little high but reflective of the good press the Coyotres are getting around hockey)

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