The Times podcast: Coyotes go urban; humans freak out. But not to worry, scientists assure us.
This podcast is dedicated to the people who, like a pair of sponges, suck up media coverage of the Arizona Coyotes and, to a lesser extent, the Buffalo Bisons, the Buffalo Sabres, and the Buffalo Bills.
All the stuff I like to hear, all the stuff I don’t.
The latest: the Arizona Coyotes have been taken off the ice by the International Ice Hockey Federation. Yes, the international hockey federation. The team has been placed on its provisional suspension pending an audit of its internal affairs. It will play in Glendale in the fall but “not until” the fall after the audit is completed.
(The full press release for the Coyotes has been sent to me by the team owner, Jerry Moyes. It contains no mention of the team’s suspension or its status should it be reinstated in Glendale.)
The Times is the home of the Coyotes. The Coyotes are the future of the NHL. You have heard it on their own radio station, heard it over and over again on my podcast, and it will be heard over and over again in print in the years to come. I’m pretty sure I could go on this topic forever with the Coyotes and, by the end, the story would be the same.
The Coyotes are the team whose success and popularity has made the NHL — which was thought to be an antiquated game played only by men, in a world where there was little to do and nothing to eat — into something more like the NFL. They are the team that has turned the NHL into a sport that isn’t just a game for men but a game for everyone.
The Coyotes are the team that has turned the NHL into a business with an annual operating budget of $850 million in a country where governments are strapped financially, tax dollars are shrinking and the economy is floundering. Arizona is no longer just a state rich in sun and open space and fertile for agriculture; it is now “the country’s premier sun and cattle country,” one newspaper article reported.
The Coyotes were founded in 1993 by an ex-Yukon Oil executive, Mike Smith