In Phoenix, Dan Bickley wrote of the Coyotes, "After four years of instability and chaos, it will be hard to convince and convey a sense of urgency to a skeptical populace. Alas, we’ve been down this road too many times." The Coyotes are "a location problem, not a marketplace problem." Had the franchise "moved to Scottsdale as originally intended, the team would be stable and profitable." Bickley: "Contrary to popular belief, we can be a thriving NHL market. All we need is the right owner, and the right mayor to make it happen" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 5/5).
LOST CAPITAL: In N.Y., Ian Austen noted for the Canadiens, the 34 lost regular-season games "still loom unpleasantly large in the downtown shops, restaurants and other business that depend on the city's highly developed affinity for hockey." The cost to Montreal’s business community from the lockout "cannot be measured precisely." But several economists and analysts "agreed that whatever the amount, it was substantial and unrecoverable." BMO Capital Markets Chief Economist & Managing Dir Douglas Porter said, "My rule of thumb is that the smaller the city, the greater the impact. In Winnipeg, it was very powerful" (N.Y. TIMES, 5/5).
FERTILIZING THE GARDEN: In Boston, Kevin Paul Dupont noted a crowd of "some 3,000 gathered outside Toronto's Air Canada Centre for each of the Leafs' first two playoff games in Boston to watch the games on a big screen." It is the "kind of outdoor partying that might happen around TD Garden if the Bruins ever get around to developing the vacant building parcels they control in the front and back of the building" (BOSTON GLOBE, 5/5).
