Bettman: Phoenix Is "Fixable"

((HT: Canwest News Service/Don McGowan))

National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman ((pictured, thanks 5hole.com)) has a simple explanation why the league is fighting to keep the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes in-Arizona.

The situation in Phoenix is "fixable," Bettman said on his weekly NHL Hour radio show on Sirius/XM satellite radio.

Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie has made a US$212.5-million offer to buy the team from current majority owner Jerry Moyes, contingent on the ability to move the team to Hamilton.

Bettman said yesterday the franchise has been managed poorly since the Winnipeg Jets moved to Arizona in 1997 and became the Coyotes, and that there are elements in place in Arizona that will allow the Coyotes to succeed. The Coyotes have not turned a profit since Moyes took over the team in 2001.

"There is a brand new building in Phoenix," Bettman said of the Jobing.com Arena, the Coyotes' home in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb. "There are people that are supportive of the franchise and want to keep it there. The team hasn't been particularly well run. It's fixable."

Bettman added the NHL is committed to showing loyalty to franchises by helping them through trying times.

"What you don't do is just abandon places to go somewhere else because somehow you think you have a divine right to a franchise in a particular place," Bettman said. "When you have fans invest in a franchise emotionally and financially, you just don't give up on them when times get tough.

"If the standard was, 'When times get tough,' we would have been out of Chicago, for Pete's sakes. We would have been out of Ottawa, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and they were all situations that were fixable."

The matter of who is in control of the Coyotes is playing out in U. S. Bankruptcy Court in Phoenix.

Moyes, who put the team into bankruptcy protection on May 5, contends he is in control of the club, but the NHL says it is in control of the team, thanks to two proxy agreements signed by Moyes in return for a loan from the NHL in November that kept the team afloat.

The judge ordered the sides to enter mediation before returning to court next week.

Bettman also brushed off criticism that the standoff over the Coyotes boils down to a clash of personalities between the commissioner and the outspoken Balsillie.

"This is about a league structure and a covenant that every game has to have with its fans," Bettman said. "Otherwise you don't have the stability you need to stay in business. To portray the whole debate as anything else does a disservice to the fans of the game."