It's the same old story of having an absolutely shit owner poison the well for a franchise in a particular area. Atlanta 2.0 failed for a similar reason. Except in the Coyotes' case, it's been a non-stop cavalcade of nightmare owners leading up to Meruelo, the worst one of them all.
If you have Athletic access, Katie Strang did a very damning expose of Meruelo and his way of "conducting" business back in 2021, which basically seems to suggest that he follows the Donald Trump school of never paying anything until strong-armed into it by someone stronger.
There's now even a rumour going around that the league's main office had to force Meruelo to pay outstanding payments to hoteliers for the Yotes' stays. That's a dismally bad look. Even worse? The Tempe campaign that was supposed to save the franchise, except this prick didn't spend a penny to actually campaign for his idea to the citizens of Tempe who genuinely would have benefited of it.
The Coyotes are dead. And it's thanks to a series of cretins being let into the cockpit, courtesy of the NHL.
I'm genuinely angry. I liked the Yotes. This feels like a group of rich wankers stole our little brother.
