The legal machinations continue. You’d need a lawyer to explain it but it remains the NHL vs. Balsillie and Moyes.
It’s logistically impossible for the Coyotes to NOT play in Phoenix this year; their being there for 2009-2010 is a done deal (a fact Balsillie is willing to live with.)
It’s impossible to guess what might happen legally speaking.
I don’t know that the court has even ruled on who has control of the team. The NHL says that they control the team because they helped them make payroll a couple of times last year. Moyes says that he has put about $300 million into the team before losses became unsustainable when his trucking business got screwed by high gas prices.
Owners may support Bettman, but at what cost? Like RickJay had pointed out there are several teams in trouble that may be looking to the league for help in the near future, does that mean this potential problem could creep up again and again? Having an owner lose $300 million and then have the league sell the team from under him for $140 million, to themselves, doesn’t really do much to boost values.
Also, lets look at the case of the Nashville Predators…Once owned by Craig Leipold, he put the team up for sale and had few interested buyers. One of the interested parties was Jim Balsillie, the other was a ‘group of local investors’. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Leipold, who wanted to buy the Minnesota Wild decided to sell for a lower price to the ‘local investors’ rather than to Balsillie, who would have moved the team. One of the local investors, William ‘Boots’ Del Biaggio was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison for fraud. It isn’t the first time that league has failed to do due diligence on a owner/potential owner. Google John Spano for shits and giggles.
No offense but that’s a horrible site. Much better options are:
The nhlcap site has the wrong cap figure for Carolina so I have major doubts about their accuracy. Frank Kaberle does not get his entire buyout this year , it’s spread over 2 years. Capgeek gets it right.
Just when you thought this might come to some sort of finale, they’ve gone into overtime… Balsillie is willing to wait until the summer to relocate the Coyotes, and is allowing the NHL until the end of December to find another buyer willing to lose a buttload of money in Glendale. He’s also offering Glendale $25M if he wins, even if he loses the appeals after.
Does this increase his odds of winning? What a fun plot twist!
He’s allowing the NHL time to find another buyer? 
How nice of him!!
It’s not up to him to decide that kind of stuff, it’s up to the court.
And it looks like it’s over and nobody wins. Thanks judge.
Judge rejects both Coyotes bids
The poll on the side currently has “bad decision” at 67%.
That may be, but the legal reasoning is perfectly sound. The alternative would have essentially suggested that the legal system no longer respected contracts or property rights, and would have been slapped down so hard it would have made Balsillie’s head spin.
I’m not surprised by the legal outcome, but I’m still very disappointed. Hamilton would have been a great place for an NHL team, and the team could have thrived.
I still think Southern Ontario will get a team sooner or later. Balsillie might not be at the helm, but with so many struggling teams in the Southern US, sooner or later one’s going to have to move. Heck, Québec City has been rumbling about trying to get a team back…that could be even more awesome! Forget make it seven…let’s make it a full 30! 
Anyone know why Balsillie seems so hell bent on getting the Coyotes? There are likely several other franchises that could be convinced to sell in the very near future and for a much lower price with much less collateral damage.
Expansion into Southern Ontario seems like a non-starter unless there’s some dramatic contraction first. Over-expansion is a big reason the NHL has been an essentially failed league for the last half dozen years or so and adding more teams would be pretty much ridiculed. Who knows what the financials work out like for contracting a team but it seems that selling and moving would be preferable.
I understand the league wanting to keep a team in Phoenix, even if that stadium deal is a complete albatross, but I can’t imagine that they have similar reservations about leaving Nashville, Carolina, Tampa or Long Island. If those teams are all up from grabs and Balsillie is in the market I can’t believe they’d lock him out completely if he played ball.
More than anything it sounds like the issue is Balsillie so desperately wanting to move this team from this city.
As I posted above , the conventional wisdom is that the NHL will make more money with an expansion team for Hamilton, that’s why they don’t want a team to move there. The only question is when do they expand again.
Kansas City has a new empty arena so there is a good chance the Coyotes could move there if they do move.