Hum! This is an interesting turn of events. They should just go ahead and move the team back to Winnipeg. The NHL has been a failure in Phoenix and yet Gary Bettman keeps up with the charade in the desert.

Winnipeg’s hopes to get back in the NHL jumped again, as the league issued an ultimatum to the city of Glendale – find a buyer for the Phoenix Coyotes by Dec. 31 or we will sell them to someone we have waiting to buy and move the team.

The threat is included in the agreement between the NHL and the suburban Phoenix city in which the city agreed to pay up to $25-million (all currency U.S.) of the Coyotes’ operating losses for the 2010-11 season. That agreement was completed on Friday and a copy was obtained by The Globe and Mail.

There was no mention of the prospective buyer in the agreement but the only buyers the NHL has admitted speaking to in connection with the Coyotes, aside from Jerry Reinsdorf and the Ice Edge group who both want to keep the Coyotes in Arizona, are Canadian billionaire David Thomson and Mark Chipman, the CEO of True North Sports and Entertainment, who own and operate the MTS Centre in Winnipeg.
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