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Winning Sells, Gimmicks Don't: Coyotes Won't Make Bad Trade For Marketing

May 2, 2016, 10:33 AM ET [56 Comments]
James Tanner
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The way that NHL commentators talk about the Coyotes is offensive.

Yes, the Arizona market has been fraught with complications and an annoying amount of off-ice garbage since basically the day the team moved there from Winnipeg. But that doesn't mean the team is run by idiots. For the most part, it has been run by people who would have an NHL job in another city if they didn't have one in Arizona.

These people are well aware of the fact that they run a team in a (wait for it.......)......"non-traditional" hockey market.

Perhaps the combination of all the historical drama, the current fight against the city of Glendale, another new ownership group and a third-straight losing season makes it seem like the team is struggling more than it is.

The perception of hockey in Arizona in other places couldn't be more wrong.

Virtually every hockey news outlet had someone publish some form of wacky trade that saw the Coyotes acquire home-town sensation Auston Matthews in exchange for a bizarre amount of players and picks.

Every day, some genius somewhere has some advice on a trade the Coyotes should make based on marketing and not the desire to have a good NHL team.



It seems as if these people can think of nothing beyond the home town connection and the Coyotes stature as the league's poorest, most struggling team.

But the Coyotes would have to be managed by complete idiots to make moves that are bad from a hockey perspective, but good from a marketing one.

Think about it:

If your NHL team has a great player, are you really going to like someone more just because they are from your home town? Star players sell. People want to see the best, where the player is from is largely irrelevant.

Sure, there would be some novelty to the Coyotes getting Matthews, but it doesn't take a genius to see that that would quickly wear off if the team continued to suck.

Winning sells. Where a player is from is not something most people care at all about.

If the Coyotes ice a losing team and have a hometown superstar, they will sell less tickets over time than if they ice a winning team with foreign players.

The main reason the Coyotes don't sell more tickets is because they always lose. If they won, if they were in the Playoffs, they might not sell out every game, but they'd be close.

According to ESPN http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance the Coyotes attendance numbers were pretty terrible, but considering they iced one of the worst teams in hockey, there is some optimism to be had.




Yes, they were 29th out of 30 teams in total attendance, but they did sell out their building to 78% capacity, which, while the second lowest in the league, isn't that bad.

It's not like they're playing to the half-empty building everyone assumes they are. All they need to do is sell 2000 more tickets per game and they're selling their arena out to 90% capacity.

If you consider where they play, which is not in a major city, but in a suburb people don't like driving to, then it's not at all unreasonable to think that if you moved downtown Phoenix and started to win a little bit, that selling an extra 2000 tickets per night would be fairly easy.

I mean, if the worst team in hockey, playing in the worst location, can sell out it's building to 78% capacity, then moving to a massive metropolitan area and winning will surely help more than just adding one 18 year-old-kid.

The Coyotes have a very deep group of forwards (Hanzal, Domi, Duclair, Reider, Dvorak, Strome, MacInnis, Letunov, Merkley, Fischer, Perlini) and basically one defenceman. So, from a team-building point, they sure don't need to make any crazy moves to add another forward. Yes, drafting the top player available would be amazing, but doing it at the expense of the foundation you've spent years building would be painfully stupid.

And since a child should be able to see that winning and a better city would improve attendance more than a single player, it's offensive when people suggest horribly lopsided moves, as if the boobs from Phoenix will do anything to sell an extra seat.

It got so bad the owner had to publicly announce he wouldn't be trading his sure-fire Hall of Fame defensemen (who happens to be on one of the best team-value contracts in the league) to do so.



And believe me, if the Coyotes aren't prepared to be stupid in their pursuit of Matthews, they aren't going to overpay for Keith Tkachuk's son. If the Coyotes had the fourth pick they probably wouldn't even pick him - since again, they aren't idiots. No, they would/will pick the highest ranking defenseman or trade down to get him. Since they're seventh, its a moot point, and they should have no troubles getting a pretty nice defenseman at that spot in the draft.

They could end up with Olli Juolevi, Jakub Chychrun, Logan Stanley or Jake Bean - all of whom would be nice additions.

And if the Coyotes don't draft a defenseman, then I take all this back. Because that would mean they really are run by idiots. All you have to do is take a peak at their depth at defense prospects to see that, on at least one site, Jared Tinordi is considered their best defensive prospect - a guy who has almost no chance of skating a regular shift on a good team. But of course, that kind of research is too hard to do for the team no one cares about.

Apparently thinking that just one guy makes a D-core, Damien Cox, in his mock draft, wrote "The 'Yotes have Dylan Strome down the middle and Oliver Ekman-Larsson on the back-line. What they could use is a scoring winger to go with Max Domi and Anthony Duclair. Nylander would be that player.")

Newsflash: The Coyotes have Oliver Ekman Larsson and nothing else. Stone and Murphy are OK, but not #s 2/3 on anyone's idea of a winning team, and everyone else they have should be cut. There isn't a prospect to speak of in the system - sure, someone might surprise, but there's no blue-chip guy. So, I don't think they need to draft a scoring winger. At all.

Anyways, I'm ranting now, I realize that. I just feel that if you look into the numbers and the attendance and have a realistic grip on the scenario there, that the lack of respect the Coyotes get is pretty appalling and not at all deserved. With Strome, Duclair, Domi and OEL, they are building a pretty special team. Let's not assume they're some dumb hicks who are going to blow that apart to sell tickets they don't really need to do that to sell.

They won't go crazy trying to get a home-town kid or the son of an ex-player. They will just continue to try and build a winning team, because winning sells. Gimmicks don't.
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