^Precisely. Mario Lemieux didn't really 'buy' the Penguins.
A corporation declares bankruptcy when it cannot afford to pay back its creditors: the people and other corporations it owes money to. When they declared bankruptcy the Penguins owed a lot of people a lot of money, supposedly around $90 million all in all. Of that $90M, they owed Mario Lemieux about $32M.
There are usually two ways a corporation will go about their bankruptcy: reorganization ("Chapter 11") or liquidation ("Chapter 7"). Under the latter option the business is shut down, all of its assets are sold off, and whatever money is raised by the selling off of those assets is given to the creditors. This is usually pennies on the dollar.
Under "Chapter 11" bankruptcy the creditors can be given ownership of the corporation instead of their debts being paid out. That's what Mario Lemieux did. The money raised by Lemieux, Burkle and the other partners of the Lemieux Group was used to pay off the other creditors who didn't want an ownership stake; they (the other creditors) wanted to be paid out.
In essence Lemieux got the Penguins for next to nothing, used Burkle et al's money to pay off the other creditors, and now they're sitting on an asset they could probably sell for upwards of $230M. Assuming Lemieux's share of Lemieux Group is about 23% and they sold the team for $230M Lemieux would get about $53M worth of that. He was owed $32M but considering he wouldn't have made much of that back if he let the team liquidate he's basically made himself $50M in 12 years. Not bad, not bad at all. Given how well the team is doing I doubt Lemieux will sell any time soon.
That's also where the $170M figure for the Coyotes comes from: the debt. It's not that the Coyotes are 'worth' $170M. On the contrary: they're relatively worthless beyond the actual 'stuff' they own like equipment, office supplies, etc. The NHL wants to sell the Coyotes for $170M because that's how much it will take to pay off the team's creditors (including the National Hockey League itself).
The problem in Phoenix was that there was no group like Lemieux's stepping forward to reorganize the team. Jim Balsillie was willing to assume ownership and pay off debts but his reorganization plan was also contingent on moving the team somewhere else. No one else stepped forward with an offer to pay off the debts and keep the team in Phoenix, so the NHL itself did. The bankruptcy court judge felt the NHL's plan was more likely to result in paying back all the debts and that's how the NHL ended up owning the team. (There's much more to this story of course.)
Even now no one really wants to pay off the team's debts and keep it in Phoenix. That's why the Coyotes' landlord, the City of Glendale, is offering to front a lot of the money to anyone willing to buy the team and keep it where it is.