Ss. Yovrs, Can anyone save the Coyotes? ayne Gretzky may have the Garth McLennan sports editor at their best place in years in terms of performance, but by next season, it might not matter. With the tanking American economy, few NHL cities have been hit as hard as Phoenix, Arizona. The housing market crisis has been at its worst in Phoenix and Tampa Bay, Florida and both of their NHL teams are on the verge of collapse. While they’ve improved this year, over the last several years, the Coyotes have been absolutely terrible on the ice. The city of Phoenix is right in the heart of the American Sunbelt and isn’t a traditional hockey market. All you have to do to recognize that the franchise is in trouble is take a look at their attendance figures. Last season, the Coyotes finished with a reported average attendance mark of 14,820 according to ESPN statistics and 29" in the NHL. The reason I say “reported” is because of the infamous policy of basement-dwelling teams in poor markets to balloon their attendance marks by giving away clumps of free tickets. Not exactly like Vancouver or Toronto, where season tickets are willed through generations and the stadiums are packed to the rafters. Since 2001, Phoenix has sat at 25" in league attendance despite increasingly desperate attempts to lure fans to the arena that would astound fans in Canadian cities. For just $79, you can score four lower bowl tickets to the palatial Jobing.com stadium, complete with four hotdogs and four soft drinks. At GM Place in Vancouver, the average ticket in the lower bowl costs well over $100 and the average soda is at least five bucks. The Coyotes are also in tough to compete for the average fan’s sports dollar. The city of Phoenix Phoenix Coyotes is one of the biggest sports towns in America and is jammed packed with competition. They have the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks on the pro side of things along with minor league baseball’s Cactus League. Arizona State’s legendary sports programs include such fan favourites as their perennially powerful baseball, basketball and football games. NASCAR holds two races each year in Phoenix, while professional golf contests two events, each on both the men’s and women’s PGA tours. The real shame is that while Phoenix can hardly count itself among the league’s elite, they are in their best place in a long time in terms of their on- ice product. Gretzky, who doubles as the team’s head coach and minority owner, has assembled the youngest team in the NHL that has a lot of offensive potential and the ability to do big things. He’s managed to find an excellent young goalie in Ilya Bryzgalov and his stable of forwards are playing an up-tempo style. This is the third year of Gretzky’s coaching tenure and after a stumbling block two years ago, he’s had the team steadily getting better. Last season, they had their first winning record in ages and Gretzky has done an astounding job at putting together fast young players. Former Everett Silvertip star Peter Mueller has developed into one of the game’s best young centers, Martin Hanzal is a budding power forward. Mikkel Boedker is an electric sniper; Viktor Tikhonov has more moves than most guys twice his age and New Westminster’s Kyle Turris is one of the best young prospects in the game—even if he’s having a rough year this season. Phoenix has ten first round draft picks currently playing on their roster including their captain, Shane Doan, who is leading the team in scoring. Phoenix is hovering around fifth place in the Western Conference and has a very real possibility of making the playoffs for the first time since 2002. If they were in any other market, they would be considered among the league’s best up-and-coming teams. That very well may be true, and while Gretzky is doing a coach-of-the-year job, the team is simply running out of money. With nobody going to games and the team set to post a colossal $45 million loss this year, it may not matter how well they do on the ice. What goes on outside the rink may be the one battle that Wayne Gretzky can’t win. Does Holyfield still have it? By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor should call it quits, but no athletic profession can equal boxing in that respect. Former champions who are long past their prime repeatedly climb back into the ring in often unsuccessful attempts to regain former glory. One fighter who has been branded with that label for over 15 years now is 46-year-old Evander Holyfield. The |: every sport there are athletes who the fight in absolutely phenomenal shape and didn’t tire throughout. While it wasn’t his best bout, Holyfield clearly won the fight. The decision went to Valuev in a highly controversial fashion that has caused general outrage in the boxing community. Holyfield’s camp has filed a protest that is currently underway while talks of a rematch have swirled since the day after the fight. While it’s clear that Holyfield is past his prime, it’s tough to count him only man in history to win the world heavyweight championship on four separate occasions has said that he will not retire until he wins a record- setting fifth world heavyweight title. Now, most people would say that it’s a fool’s errand; that at his advanced age, Holyfield doesn’t have a hope at even coming close to another world title reign. The thing is, though, people have been counting Holyfield out now for over a decade and he’s still proving his critics wrong. When he was handed his first ever defeat and lost his world championship for the first time to 14 Riddick Bowe back in 1992, boxing pundits and experts began calling for his retirement. When it was announced that he would fight Bowe again, it was expected to be a slaughter as Bowe was younger, much stronger and had over 30 pounds in weight advantage. However, Holyfield retook his title. When he fought Mike Tyson in 1995 for the first time, the odds were 17-1 in favour of Tyson. Again though, Holyfield TKO’ed Tyson and captured the world title. Since moving up to the heavyweight division after dominating at the cruiserweight level, Holyfield has always been the smaller guy in the ring, and that’s held true today. In October of 2007 in Russia, Holyfield took on Sultan Ibragimov for the WBO Heavyweight Championship in a slow bout that Ibragimov took by decision. After that setback it was widely assumed that Holyfield was finished, and a 14-month layoff only augmented that belief. It was with a measure of surprise, though, that Holyfield was set to take on WBA Heavyweight Champion Nikolai Valuev in another title shot. Despite his age, Holyfield came into the bout looking like he was 25. He entered out. He’s been more than able to keep up with those that he’s fought and he hasn’t looked out of place or tired. While his market value has plummeted from what it once was (he made just $600,000 for the Valuev fight), he’s still a fast, entertaining boxer who has more heart than just about anyone fighting today. After all of the wars that Holyfield has been through over the course of his career, you have to give him credit that until he decides to hang up the gloves on his own terms; he won’t quit for anyone.