Hold ‘er there for a second. Can you believe it? Hockey has been a miserable failure in the desert. That’s right, a sport played on ice hasn’t worked out in a place where the only ice that has been seen outside of the arena the last 12 years has been produced by a freezer. There are two words to describe what has happened in Arizona: “Epic” and ”Failure.”

You can’t fault the franchise completely. They brought the best and most popular player ever to play the game in to coach, yet that hasn’t worked. They switched to a new arena – one that’s more accommodating to hockey – yet that hasn’t worked. They have spent millions of dollars to try and succeed. Finally, the owners said no more; and in December asked the league for help so the franchise didn’t have to fold. Can you blame them?

Not to rehash what we’ve gone over before around here, but the NHL below the Mason Dixon line for the most part is a failure. Nashville has been at the table to be sold and relocated a few times, the Florida Panthers are virtually non existent, the Tampa Bay Lightning won a Stanley Cup, but the fans have slowly dropped. It just hasn’t worked. Even with overwhelming proof, Gary Bettman disagrees. “All of this blanket characterization of ‘hockey doesn’t work in the Sun Belt’ is just hogwash,” he told the Arizona Republic two months ago.

In 1993, the NBA made a decision to expand into Canada, placing teams in two of their biggest markets. Five years after they began play, it became painfully obvious that the Vancouver Grizzlies were not working out in the hockey crazy market. Their owners were losing millions and couldn’t find ways to cover some costs. Fearing long term harm, David Stern admitted defeat and approved the first franchise relocation in over 15 years at their request. He didn’t wait for bankruptcy, and he didn’t try and force his product on a place that wanted nothing to do with it; instead, he moved on.

What about the Canadian Football League? In the mid-1990’s they began what was considered to be a massive expansion into the United States filing voids in large markets without teams. Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Birmingham were amongst the American cities that were a part of the failed experiment that lasted only three years before the league pulled the plug.

On the other hand, Gary Bettman hasn’t been so quick. He watched with dollar signs in his eyes as expansion and relocation into some of the bigger hockey-less markets in America exploded in the 1990’s. Included in that was the locally popular Winnipeg Jets leaving the small 600,000 resident town for the growing metropolis of over two million people that was Phoenix at the time. The fans showed at first – hockey was an unknown – but quickly the Coyotes fell to the bottom of league attendance.

Enter Jim Balsillie. He and his company have been most known for developing the Blackberry that occupies so many people’s pockets and purses these days. He’s young, he’s rich, and man does he really want a hockey team as evidenced by his attempted purchase of the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators. In 2007, Balsillie conjured up 12,000 season ticket commitments to move the Predators to Hamilton, Ontario. Not wanting to admit defeat in the Sun Belt, the league intervened then. It was his website yesterday that announced his intentions to buy the Coyotes and move them to Southern Ontario- an area with a population just under 700,000.

Despite all the financial problems of the Coyotes, the City of Glendale does not want to see a relocation happen. They contributed $180 Million towards a brand new arena that opened in 2003, with the Coyotes as their primary tenant. The team signed a 30 year lease with the arena with a buy out of $700 Million. However, Glendale City Councilman Phil Lieberman told the Arizona Republic that bankruptcy was the one thing that could trump the penalty. If the Coyotes leave, the new venue will stand empty on most nights.

The question now is, will the league finally admit that some cities, no matter what they can potentially offer the league, are not hockey markets? Or, will they stick to their guns again and do everything in their power to keep the struggling franchise in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale?

It might be one of the biggest decisions towards hockey’s future in the Sun Belt of the United States…will the citizens of Phoenix even notice?

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