Gary Bettman’s threats backfiring in the Valley

The Valley is the strangest NHL market in North America. For years, it’s been the only place where hockey fans cheered Gary Bettman and booed Wayne Gretzky.

We’ve had good reasons for both.

But the dynamics have changed almost overnight. Bettman’s three-page letter to the Arizona legislature is backfiring badly on the NHL’s snappish commissioner. His bold-faced remarks that the Coyotes “cannot and will not remain in Glendale” come off as heavy-handed threats that absolve a hockey team from its non-competitive past while chiding a local government for withdrawing hefty subsidies it can no longer afford.

They reflect the desperation that suddenly clouds the Coyotes’ future in the desert, along with Bettman’s legacy of Sun Belt expansion. The carnage is only beginning.

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The greater Phoenix area has experienced significant growing pains in our 19-year history as a big-league sports market. Despite only one major championship in nearly two decades, local teams have made considerable progress at unifying a transient community, where our collective pride in Arizona has been stunted by childhood memories and mixed allegiances.

Slowly, we’re beginning to understand the communal benefits that accompany the concept of one city, one team. There’s an intuitive understanding that living in Arizona while cheering for franchises in another state is no way to live and no way to grow together.

This evolution takes time. Those who relocated to Arizona have no obligation to stop supporting teams that brightened their adolescence, teams that made a difference in their own quality of life. But the narrative changes when those same people have children who are born in State 48, when bequeathing fandom to teams from a different state seems ridiculous and no way to foster local pride.

But stadium-related issues change the game for everyone. They are a huge civic turnoff, especially when wealthy owners want taxpayers to pay for new buildings, increasing their profit margins and revenue streams at our expense. The Coyotes are proof, a team that is returning with hat in hand, at the public trough for a second time.

The Diamondbacks need to take heed, a franchise embroiled in their own current spat with Maricopa County, where Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred threw his weight behind our baseball team the way Bettman did with the Coyotes. This confluence of conflict and entitlement threatens to tear us apart just when we’re nearing adulthood as a sports mecca, turning people away from Arizona teams just when we seemed to be making significant strides.

So what happens next?

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Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton was once an outspoken proponent of a multi-use facility shared by the Suns, the Coyotes and every musical act stopping through Phoenix on their way to Los Angeles. Does he have the stomach, political juice and conviction to keep fighting this battle, after a survey showed seven of 10 voters oppose funding a new hockey arena?  Does he have the fortitude to put public pressure on Robert Sarver to be more neighborly, to bend for the common good?

So far, the Suns owner has played this game with a keen eye and uncommon restraint. He has asked for nothing and shown zero impatience. He seems content to wait out the five years necessary to void his lease at Talking Stick Resort Arena, effectively shutting down any chance of co-tenancy with the Coyotes.

To the contrary, the Suns claim to be looking at costs involved with refurbishing their current arena rather than requesting a sparkling new facility. That’s a genius move that should fool no one. The Suns sorely want a much bigger facility that can house their basketball team as well as Beyonce and Ed Sheeran, but they don’t want to share living quarters with the Coyotes, and they don’t want to get involved in the current political firestorm.

That’s why Bettman chose to lash out at the local legislature. He knows that options are dwindling, and losing an eight-year battle to keep the Coyotes in Arizona will reflect very poorly on his vision and his long-term branding of the NHL.

But sports fans in the Valley are smarter than they look. The Coyotes have failed on their end of the bargain, running their franchise on the cheap while depending on handouts to survive. If this team had consistently exposed Arizonans to the majesty of playoff hockey over the past decade, this conversation would sound much different.

Truth is, they haven’t done anything to warrant a second home on our dime. And even though head coach Dave Tippett is a great coach with a stellar reputation in the Valley, he openly admits his team is at least “two years away” from playoff contention.

Nobody that cares about Arizona wants to lose our NHL team or our elite status as a big-league sports market. But few can rationalize another plateful of public funding to build another new arena for a NHL franchise that has one extended playoff run in 21 years. The Coyotes didn’t help matters in a press release blaming their current location for alienating their “premium ticketholders and ticket sponsors.” What does that say to the people who currently show up to games with open minds and open hearts?

It means that Coyotes fans could digress into class warfare. It could lead to a division between hockey fans and NBA fans in the Valley, especially if Sarver doesn’t willingly come to the rescue.

It’s a bad deal for everyone at the worst possible time. And it could cost Bettman the one NHL market that appreciated his doggedness and loyalty, the one fan base that cheered whenever he showed up for hockey games in Glendale.

Reach Bickley at [email protected] or 602-444-8253. Follow him on twitter.com/dan.bickley.  Listen to “Bickley and Marotta” weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM.