SOLD!!! Now We Can Get Down To Business

The temptation to do a Told You So %$#^ is not lost on me.

But I am way too classy for that.

The Coyotes sale has been approved by the NHL per John Shannon of Sportsnet:

The sale of the Arizona Coyotes becomes official today. Andrew Barroway becomes majority owner of the hockey club.

— John Shannon (@JSportsnet) December 31, 2014

It's not that I predicted the deal or anything (because predictions are not something I dabble in without the help of the Psychic Friends Network) but because I have written several times about the many logical reasons why the NHL and the Coyotes are in Arizona to say and yet am (understandably) inundated on a constant basis with comments about the team being on the verge or moving, etc.

I think I can speak for the entire fanbase of the team when I say this gets a little annoying. Sure, attendance sucks and the team has been a joke in the past, but when Ice Arizona came in and started making things a lot better, this good news was met with derision and incredulity - certainly this new good news will be met with criticism of Barroway and probably a conspiracy theory or two about how he secretly plans to move the team to Iowa in the middle of the night.

So let us have this one.

I hate talking about ownership and hopefully this ends it, at least for a while. But before we leave this topic, hopefully forever, we must responsibly ask: What does that mean?

Well, hopefully it means the injection of capital and the start of the rebuild. Hopefully the transition insulates the team from a win now mentality and they can move out their assets for maximum value and rebuild.

The good news here is that a rebuild isn't really a long project, since the team is stacked with young talent and sure-fire above average NHL players like Boedker (25) OEL (23) and then with the less established guys like Gormely, Stone, Murphy, Domi, Samuelsson, Perlini, Visintine and Reider. There is also a bunch of lesser but still potentially effective guys like Lessio, Gaudett, Dauphin and McMillan. The team also has Gagner who is only 25 and a bit of a wildcard.

So if you add a top pick to this group plus whatever you can for Yandle, Doan, Korpikoski, Michalek and Vermette, maybe Hanzal too, you're looking at a team that can probably regroup and be competitive fairly quickly.

Plus there is always the off chance the new owner will pony up and pay Yandle enough to keep him here.

------- Tonight's game is against the Stars. My eggs are ready, I'll write abit about this in a while.