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Two things I didn't think I'd say this year: "the Phoenix Coyotes come into this game with one of the league's better offenses," and "the Phoenix Coyotes come into this game."
So after four years, four attempted relocations, and almost ten potential new owners, against all odds and common sense, this fucking bullshit team is still around. Gary Bettman brought in his best Really Smart People to bamboozle a retirement town consisting entirely of America's village idiots into thinking that the hockey team at its strip mall was critical to the city's economic success, and finally got his plan in which taxpayers subsidize the NHL to the tune of $15 million a year after five years (a compromise from the original $25 million) to take, "selling" the team to some oil guys from Alberta and some assorted hedge fund shitheads who were poking around this thing since the beginning but never had the money to buy it themselves. Even though the team is technically no longer owned by the NHL, they loaned the new ownership a significant amount of the purchase price, so they basically paid someone to buy it from themselves. Combine this with the tax money coming in and we're talking big-time OPM.
So what's the NHL's obsession with keeping a team that plays to 7,000 people a night, anyway? It's twofold: Glendale built the jobing.com Arena (lol) in 2003, and to have walked out on a new hockey-specific arena after just six years and five seasons would have hurt their chances of running the stadium socialism scam on other cities down the road. Also, because the NHL's player salaries are a set function of revenue, it benefits the league as a whole to have a team or two that depresses the income level. Under the old CBA, it was 57% of revenues going back to the players, now it's down to 50%. But if you have Phoenix and Florida around to not make any money while Canada and the Original Six rake it in, the money paid out goes down from what it would be if you had Quebec City and Hamilton recording merely league-median revenues (this is what Ottawa makes, these two could do even better). But because the demand for hockey in the big markets is relatively inelastic, they make the same money whether the league's thirtieth team is in Phoenix, Quebec City, or up your mom's ass. So pushing the salary cap down means that there's more money that is safe from having to come back out. It's counterproductive to the health of the league and the sport and absolutely insane. The most sinister part of the whole arrangement is that the players' share is ascertained by holding a third of player salaries in escrow and clawing back the excess money if it should come out to more than 57% (or 50% now), so not only do taxpayers pay to keep a dead team alive, so do the players themselves.
This is all absolutely disgusting, sports economics at its actual worst, but the motherfuckers made it work. Jerry Reinsdorf didn't buy the team because he couldn't get the government to set up a taxing district that would pay money to Jerry Reinsdorf. Matt Hulsizer, investment guy from Chicago, couldn't buy the team because the Goldwater Institute (it is Arizona) foiled his scheme to sell the arena parking lots to the city because the city already owned the parking lots in the first place and it would just be them giving him $200 million for nothing. He also failed to run this game on St. Louis for the Blues. This is all true. Greg Jamison, partial owner of the Sharks, failed to buy the team because he asked for $300 million from the city and reportedly couldn't raise "a dime" to cover the down payment on the team. Finally, we got these chuckleheads, who have a five-year out clause to move the team if it loses $50 million in such time. It will.
So in the meantime, we have to deal with these assholes on the ice, emboldened by their theft of taxpayers to an elite record. They're scoring over three goals a game on the year and I have no idea how. Their roster kinda sucks. Radim Vrbata, Lauri Korpikoski, and Mikkel Boedker are all nice little complementary guys but wouldn't be primary options on any team I built. Hanzal is always hurt. Mike Ribeiro is a coked-up fuck. Former shitty Blackhawks farmhand Rob Klinkhammer has been turned into a successful garbage-goal scorer because of course he would be by a team like this. Jeff Halpern is still clinging to a spot in this league. Shane Doan is one of the biggest shitheads in the league who wraps himself in Canadian patriotism and Christianity to get away with it; how a guy who shit-talks the Quebecois and threatened not to honor his contract if the team moved to Canada is a Great Canadian is beyond me. They're loaded at defense: Oliver Ekman-Larsson is probably their best player, with Keith Yandle right up there, and strong support from Zbynek Michalek, David Schlemko, and Derek Morris.
Flopping bitch Mike Smith regularly stole games for this team, but he's been bad this year. Just as the team is scoring over three goals a game, they're giving up as many, only getting it back down to three even with a 3-2 win in St. Louis the other night. The Coyotes seem to be struggling to set up their traditional shell in front of him, and so without people to block shots for him, they go in, because he's not a very good goaltender. He pulled a player's hair this year, by the way, that twat.
Anyway, the problem with this team is that they try hard the entire game, whether that's forechecking or blocking shots or whatever. This doesn't match up well with a Hawks team that we've seen take periods (the third) off, if not entire games (Calgary, Edmonton). Short of lighting up and chasing Smith twice last year, we always lose these games, either 2-0 stinkeroos or 3-2 shootout losses. My hopes aren't high for this one, and this might even be the best team they've fielded under Tippett, which sucks. Oh well. I hope they win anyway. Hate these cocksuckers so much.
Coyotes: 13-4-2 inflated, 9-5-5 adjusted, 19.715 expected (win and a half of overachieving)
Hawks: 12-2-4 inflated, 10-4-4 adjusted, 23.848 expected (negligible underachieving)
Coyotes: 3.105 for (6th), 3.000 against (24th), .105 differential (14th)
Hawks: 3.556 for (2nd), 2.611 against (16th), .944 differential (6th)
Coyotes: 14/70 on the power play (20.0%, 11th), 58/74 on the penalty kill (78.4%, 25th)
Hawks: 14/63 on the power play (22.2%, 4th), 38/51 on the penalty kill (74.5%, 29th! We passed the Isles!)
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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