News Article: Athletic "Dysfunction In The Desert" Story

[BigJCaRoach]

Katie Strang is a hack.

 

[technoviking]

The best is seeing the response on twitter, my god.

 

[MIGs Dog]

Why can’t this shit just stop. I just wanna watch hockey, man

It's all part of the experience...just soak it in.

 

[JasonDemersWasOkay]

How can we say this is just a hit piece when every other horrible story that comes out about this team ends up being true. The prospect testing scandal, the Chayka debacle, missed payments. Do we really have any reason to believe this dysfunction isn’t real or serious?

I just want some media person to find something positive to say. All they can say is “wow”

 

[BigJCaRoach]

The sky isn’t falling.

 

[hbk]

Any time this organization takes a step forward in the ice there is always a unnamed source and an article like this.

does it absolve the ownership of being pricks? No. Am i surprised we are cutting costs and there are employees who feel threatened by change? God no.

some of the best teams in the league have been run by assholes. Why should we be surprised that ours may be as well.

its a hit piece with likely pieces of truth. Should we be concerned? I don’t know. Im kind of numb to most of it. There wasn’t anything in it that we haven’t already heard rumors about outside of the harassment which should not be allowed to be tolerated if true.

this is an ownership group with zero experience with sports and hockey. They have made mistakes no question. I believe it has been dysfunctional; especially when the GM jumps the first opportunity that he had. They are clueless when it comes to hockey opps. Hiring Armstrong was the step to address that.

 

[The Feckless Puck]

A special Hall of Shame Raspberry to Ms. Strang for the way she worded her description of the Coyotes' beef with Paradigm, their flight chartering company. She bookends the paragraph with the amounts that the Coyotes owed to Paradigm, leads with Paradigm's lawsuit over monies owed, and then "oh by the way" reveals that Paradigm was being sued by the Coyotes before Paradigm filed suit against them - a suit related to the fact that Paradigm got nailed by the FAA for operating unauthorized charter flights with unqualified pilots while being understaffed and without required safety personnel.

The Coyotes wanted - and got - the judge in the Paradigm case to consolidate both cases together because they are interconnected. The Coyotes argued that Paradigm was in breach of contract, and then Paradigm sued the Coyotes for breach of contract afterwards. Paradigm didn't want the cases consolidated because they claim the two cases have nothing to do with each other; seems obvious to me, though, that they didn't want the cases consolidated because the context really hurts their prospects.

But, Ms. Strang is keen to point out to close the paragraph, the Coyotes owe even more in unpaid invoices now!

I generally hate the term "fake news" because it's a catch-all for an absolute avalanche of other issues - bias, incomplete reporting, subjects uncomfortable with the spotlight, et al. ad infinitum - and I'm not going to use it with Katie Strang. But I'll say this - whatever could have been reported about these issues in the name of information and transparency has been done a disservice by this piece of clickbait.

 

[BigJCaRoach]

I just want some media person to find something positive to say. All they can say is “wow”

Garland,Conor

 

[Dirty Old Man]

That statement could be construed as sexual harassment.

It doesn't take much.

About 10-12 years ago I had a female internal customer who was dissatisfied with progress being made on a project; she threatened to impose extra meetings and daily status reports until she got what she wanted ("the beatings will continue until morale improves!" kinda thing)... in the email where the project manager - a longtime colleague of mine with whom I worked well - informed me of this, I replied something to the effect of "haha, if she thinks she can micromanage me I'll tell her where she can stick it"....well, that email accidentally got included in a long thread that the PM hit "reply all" to at the wrong time, and this lady tried to get me fired. One uncomfortable sincere-sounding 30 minute apology phone call fixed the issue (she ended up leaving months later anyway as it turned out), but... yeah, sometimes it's like walking on eggshells.

 

[technoviking]

How can we say this is just a hit piece when every other horrible story that comes out about this team ends up being true. The prospect testing scandal, the Chayka debacle, missed payments. Do we really have any reason to believe this dysfunction isn’t real or serious?

I just want some media person to find something positive to say. All they can say is “wow”

what new thing was reported besides that sexual harassment bit? It was almost a collection of our past year but written in a particular bias

 

[Dirty Old Man]

Yes any or all of this stuff is true, I can’t help to think we’re in more danger than ever before when it comes to relocation. I think the NHL probably thought Meruelo was the end of their headaches. If he is causing more, they may finally just give into the angry mob.

Nah, still need an owner and an arena in another city. And that city probably can't be in the EST zone. Not worried. We've still got a few years.

 

[technoviking]

Should be interesting to see Craig's take on this article

 

[RABBIT]

Maybe I jumped the gun on my initial response, but again I haven’t been able to read the article myself. Was just going off of bits and pieces provided to me. If you guys feel it was mostly a smear piece then I trust you guys, but some parts are still concerning

 

[Mosby]

Also, good luck to this reporter and potentially The Athletic as a whole in ever getting Army to take another interview. Why is it worth his time if this is the result? Reading the article you can pinpoint where it turned personal for this reporter when she starts with the unnecessary arrows in calling Army an opportunist, etc. It essentially devolved into "this person was short with me so I'm going to take him down a peg".

 

[Grimes]

Should be interesting to see Craig's take on this article

One of my first thoughts. Or a Doan statement.

 

[SR]

Get Mereulos kid the f*** out of this operation. Spoiled little bitch thinks it’s just all fun and games. He has absolutely zero reason to be a part of this team in any way shape or form. There’s absolutely nothing this tag along, privileged, little bitch brings to the table.

Alex needs to hire hockey guys to run this operation and sit back and fund the thing in hopes to making a small profit, that’s it. Stay out of it if you have no idea what you’re doing.

 

[_Del_]

SR is new to professional sports, I see...

 

[rt]

The article strikes me as being nearly as bizarre as the situation it is attempting to expose.

The whole thing starts out with this insane level of detail about how big, nice, and expensive XG’s house is. I mean she’s REALLY laboring over setting the stage for the draft party. And it never ties back in? What was the point? Just attempting to appeal to classist sympathies? Like this rich bastard must be evil because he’s rich and therefore an evil bastard? I don’t get it.

The Mitch Miller stuff seems like a complete Red Herring. Basically she says nobody quite knows how that got f***ed up but obviously it did and they tried to figure out how and it was really uncomfortable for everyone. Yeah? So?

I really don’t understand the point of any of the Bill Armstrong stuff. It sounds like she felt he was rude and unprofessional when he reached out to her. It sounds like he was unhappy with her professionalism. It seems like the only reason he was included in this story is because she’s upset with how their communication went. Which is really odd to me. I really don’t get this part at all.

I think the meat of the article should have been how the Meruelo group conducts itself culturally and in business affairs. There’s probably an interesting story there. But this article is so distracted with extraneous tabloid stuff, that it really never spends enough time on what’s meaningful, here.

She shined a light on some business conduct and cultural conduct that seems alarming at first. But does not go into detail on it relatively speaking. How bad is the delta? How much worse is what they’re doing than is typical? That’s all anyone should care about. And she doesn’t answer that.

 

[Prarievarg]

Wish the athletic would get some backlash for letting hostile trash like this through. Unfortunately all response will be "move the team lol" from people who doesn't even read past the first paragraph

 

[The Feckless Puck]

The article strikes me as being nearly as bizarre as the situation it is attempting to expose.

The whole thing starts out with this insane level of detail about how big, nice, and expensive XG’s house is. I mean she’s REALLY laboring over setting the stage for the draft party. And it never ties back in? What was the point? Just attempting to appeal to classist sympathies? Like this rich bastard must be evil because he’s rich and therefore an evil bastard? I don’t get it.

The Mitch Miller stuff seems like a complete Red Herring. Basically she says nobody quite knows how that got f***ed up but obviously it did and they tried to figure out how and it was really uncomfortable for everyone. Yeah? So?

I really don’t understand the point of any of the Bill Armstrong stuff. It sounds like she felt he was rude and unprofessional when he reached out to her. It sounds like he was unhappy with her professionalism. It seems like the only reason he was included in this story is because she’s upset with how their communication went. Which is really odd to me. I really don’t get this part at all.

I think the meat of the article should have been how the Meruelo group conducts itself culturally and in business affairs. There’s probably an interesting story there. But this article is so distracted with extraneous tabloid stuff, that it really never spends enough time on what’s meaningful, here.

She shined a light on some business conduct and cultural conduct that seems alarming at first. But does not go into detail on it relatively speaking. How bad is the delta? How much worse is what they’re doing than is typical? That’s all anyone should care about. And she doesn’t answer that.

Great summary. Only thing I'd add is that Katie Strang did not mention a single word about how many of the issues she mentions were pre-existing when Meruelo took over, viz., existing bad contracts, which of the disgruntled employees were hired by previous ownership groups, etc. There is absolutely no grounding context for any of the issues - just reactions from people who are absolutely not vetted at all by any standard of journalistic requirements.

 

[Mosby]

I'd rather Meruelo Jr. not be involved at all but it sounds like Army has at least minimized his role. Just tuck him away in the corner watching hockey youtube ("you're going to learn how to scout, Jr").

 

[rt]

I’m not dismissing that there’s a lot of smoke and it’s likely there’s some fire here. I welcome an expose. I’d love to find out more about this. I just think this article was a mess. It’s all over the place and it’s so confused.

At least 50% of it should have been cut out. Probably a lot more. So much of the narrative was pointless.

Are the seemingly improper business tactics being employed by the Meruelo group indicative of a poorly run franchise or indicative of a really tough situation that a lot of teams find themselves dealing with? That should have been the focus. And we aren’t any closer to this information.

But we do now know, in intimate detail, exactly how fancy XG’s house is. And we know that AM Jr watches a lot of YouTube at work. And that BA can be rude on the phone.

She can and has done so much better than this. This is an embarrassing moment for the Coyotes but should also be for Strang and the Athletic.

 

[technoviking]

The article strikes me as being nearly as bizarre as the situation it is attempting to expose.

The whole thing starts out with this insane level of detail about how big, nice, and expensive XG’s house is. I mean she’s REALLY laboring over setting the stage for the draft party. And it never ties back in? What was the point? Just attempting to appeal to classist sympathies? Like this rich bastard must be evil because he’s rich and therefore an evil bastard? I don’t get it.

The Mitch Miller stuff seems like a complete Red Herring. Basically she says nobody quite knows how that got f***ed up but obviously it did and they tried to figure out how and it was really uncomfortable for everyone. Yeah? So?

I really don’t understand the point of any of the Bill Armstrong stuff. It sounds like she felt he was rude and unprofessional when he reached out to her. It sounds like he was unhappy with her professionalism. It seems like the only reason he was included in this story is because she’s upset with how their communication went. Which is really odd to me. I really don’t get this part at all.

I think the meat of the article should have been how the Meruelo group conducts itself culturally and in business affairs. There’s probably an interesting story there. But this article is so distracted with extraneous tabloid stuff, that it really never spends enough time on what’s meaningful, here.

She shined a light on some business conduct and cultural conduct that seems alarming at first. But does not go into detail on it relatively speaking. How bad is the delta? How much worse is what they’re doing than is typical? That’s all anyone should care about. And she doesn’t answer that.

I agree, that bit about his 3.5 million dollar house was really weird. And the fact that she really does not dig into anything that deeply, except the research done to know the value of XG's house, the name of his neighborhood, and his square footage. Then the sexual harassment bit was thrown in right at the end. Could be cause for concern, could not be. The business stuff is somewhat alarming depending on the situation, but she didn't paint the proper picture for us. It could be exactly as XG says, their attempting to change the way the business operates and maybe that means that some of their expenses were crazy out of control. That could be the case, who was there before the Meruelo group to make sure that stuff was in check? Barroway? Then she goes into the overdue payments for the arena and end with a quote from ASM's execute vice president that says "We have no issues with how we work together, we have a great relationship with them." What?

 

[SR]

SR is new to professional sports, I see...

How so?

 

[technoviking]

How so?

Think he's referencing nepotism in sports