Coyotes never had a chance in the Valley

A moment of silence, please, for the Phoenix Coyotes.

We never really fell in love with them, and most of us won’t miss them, but still, they were part of us.

Coyotes file for bankruptcy, could move to Ontario

To think, all these years waiting for another White-Out, and all we’re left with is Wite-Out.

In case you hadn’t heard, the Coyotes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, and the filing included a proposed sale to Canadian billionaire Jim Basillie, who would pay $212.5 million for the team and move it to Ontario, Canada.

Other offers will be entertained in an effort to keep the team in Glendale, but a buyer willing to outbid Basillie would require a miracle the size of the Red Sea parting, and last I looked, Moses wasn’t in the market for a hockey team.

No, the only way the Coyotes are staying put is if the NHL and Glendale decide to wage war with Basillie and Coyotes’ owner Jerry Moyes.

According to several published reports, commissioner Gary Bettman had no idea Moyes would file for bankruptcy and is livid that Moyes and Basillie went behind his back and worked out a deal.

How mad was Bettman? He removed Moyes from having any position of authority with the club and supposedly will try to block the sale of the team.

One question: Why?

I can understand Glendale fighting to keep the Coyotes. Without hockey, it will lose the revenue generated by 41 home games at Jobing.com Arena, and Westgate will become a ghost town on some nights.

But what is Bettman’s rationale? So what if he doesn’t like Basillie, as reports suggest. So what if he feels he was left out of the loop. He has a billionaire owner wanting to buy a hockey team that’s hemorrhaging money. His responsibility is to do what’s best for the league, and surely the NHL would be better off leaving Glendale for Canada.

Bettman’s next step, should he persist with this silliness, will be to try to find another buyer, gain concessions from Glendale and keep the Coyotes in the Valley.

Good luck with that. Moyes has been trying to dump the Coyotes for years without success. And with creditors lining up at the franchise’s door, is Bettman really willing to broker a deal for less money than Basillie is offering? Where’s the sense in that?

Clearly, Bettman doesn’t want to admit defeat. His decision to rush head-first into Sun Belt markets was never well thought-out. With the exception of a few U.S. cities, hockey is a fringe sport in this country, and selling it in sports-rich markets always was going to be problematic.

Phoenix isn’t the only warm-weather city whose hockey team has hemorrhaged money. Atlanta, Carolina, Florida — they’re all experiencing financial difficulties.

But Bettman isn’t solely responsible for this mess. The Coyotes might have made a go of it here if they hadn’t been so horribly mismanaged.

Maybe the team wouldn’t have filed for bankruptcy had former owner Steve Ellman and Scottsdale worked out a deal to build an arena on the site of the old Los Arcos mall. Unfortunately, Ellman never did present a feasible plan to the city, and when Glendale offered to pay the large majority of the construction costs of Jobing.com Arena, he jumped.

I don’t blame Ellman, nor do I blame Scottsdale for showing some financial restraint. But the move to Glendale, while necessary, cut off the Coyotes from half the Valley. The Cardinals can make that work, given it’s the NFL and they only play 10 Sunday home games a year. But hockey on a weeknight? Not a chance.

Of course, the Coyotes might have stood some chance of survival had they put a competitive team on the ice. Fans will brave rush-hour traffic to see a winner. But it’s been seven years since the Coyotes were in the playoffs, and they never won a postseason series. By the end, only die-hard hockey fans were venturing to the arena, and there aren’t enough of those in the Valley to support a team.

Bettman likely will make a lot of noise the next few days. He’ll scream and shout and stomp all about until he’s red in the face. But in the end, what choice does he have but to give in and let Basillie buy the club?

At some point, doesn’t he — and the league — have to cut his losses?