A FAN’S NOTES

Oh, How We Howled

The saga of the NHL Coyotes is almost biblical. Jettisoned from Manitoba the club spent thirty years wandering in the Arizona desert before Great Salt Lake parted (evaporated, actually) to reveal the Promised Land: Utah.

Coyote wandering eventually led to a sort of breather in Glendale, a city of some 250,000 on the outskirts of the Phoenix metroplex. I saw a game there, maybe twenty years ago. I recall a short, quaint main street, sort of a southwest postcard cliché. The team played in a brand-new arena whose naming rights were purchased by Jobing.com – I never did learn what that company did before it ceased to exist. Glendale bet its future on pro sports. In addition to the arena, the city built a football stadium for the NFL Cardinals (Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix). The city also gave five hundred acres of land to the MLB Dodgers and White Sox, enticement to join the Cactus League, play nine innings now and then in March. None of these initiatives paid out double at the window.

The Jobing rink was empty. I clocked the men’s room and the beer station in the concourse by my section. When I ordered my first beer the vendor asked for a picture ID. I was pushing fifty. He lingered a moment over my Alberta learner’s driving permit. We chatted, there was time because nobody, not another soul was around. I felt pretty exclusive, personal bartender and all. I tipped him generously: Remember me. When I returned for a second one, he began pouring it as I approached the counter. He asked me for my ID again. I said, “Really?” “It’s the law.” We went through that ritual a few more times.

I watched Jeremy Roenick as the pre-game skate wound down. He patiently and diligently distributed pucks to the few kids who’d ventured down to the glass in the home team’s end. He underhanded some like softballs, golf chipped others with the blade of his stick. All that diplomatic effort on behalf of a lousy team in a lousy location where buying a cup of beer is as complicated as a Fanny Mae or Freddy Mac mortgage application. Maybe that’s why he’s the only Coyote I can name.  

I still enjoy sports. Not as much as I used to, but I try and keep current even if the results and standings in my morning newspaper are incomplete and stale, day-old; I don’t watch network TV. There was a time when the circus was desperately important; when I could name most of the players on most of the teams in the leagues I cared about. These days I lean more toward the old timers and their colourful old stories. I’ve more interest in Stan Mikita than Chicago’s current “generational” rookie phenom whose name escapes me. My creative impulses and lifelong appreciation of graphic design keep me in modern games: team laundry (home, road and alternates) and logos (primary and secondary) always intrigue.

I belong to a public Facebook group that frets about athletic aesthetics. Stuff can get hilariously though inadvertently arcane. Still, even pedants are capable of actual humour. One fellow suggested NHL Utah should follow in tradition set by the NBA’s Jazz and name the club for a genre of music no one in the state has ever heard: the Reggae. I laughed. Speculation on the transplanted franchise’s colours and nickname is rife. The sweeping generalization, the common misconception of Utah, is that it’s a theocratic outlier state in the Union south of 49. Holier, but as distinct in popular perception as the white supremacist state of Idaho, if only because Jesus spent the inaugural Easter long weekend on an impromptu getaway to Provo. Maybe Ogden. I don’t know: Saints, Pioneers, Bishops, Hypocrites and Polygamists (that one compliments of the 300 Club’s Uncivil Servant) might be in play.

When I was still in the game, I had, because of various client contracts and agreements, extensive dealings with a printing company in Salt Lake City. I hosted members of that shop’s team dedicated to my Calgary firm’s account a couple of times. They were good people, a dedicated, competent crew. Not one of them had been born in Utah, they’d all moved for work and couldn’t wait to leave. The message dismayed me as we were getting things done together and I trusted them, but at the same time it was important information to be aware of, to file away. I suspect Salt Lake City will become the new place of NHL exile, the most popular destination in no-trade clauses.

My only experience with Salt Lake City was a layover at its airport for a few hours, waiting on the last leg of a journey home. I was relieved to find a bar with ashtrays because I’d imagined the facility as a sort of dry non-believer hell. I think the bartop was zinc. I settled in near the ale taps, one eye on the arrivals and departures screen and the other on an afternoon west coast ball game – Giants maybe, possibly the 49ers; I really don’t remember. But I do the remember the cowboy customer. He walked in, boots and bowed legs. Whatever you may picture as his hat and jacket, you’d not be wrong. He reminded me of the dude mascot on the cover of every single Pure Prairie League album. He sat down beside me and nodded a greeting. He lit a Marlboro. He ordered a shot of bourbon with a Budweiser chaser. He repeated the process twice more inside of half an hour. Then he nodded farewell and ambled out. The “Cowboy” I’d known in Edmonton as a barfly friend and who was stabbed to death by his mail-order Filipina girlfriend had nothing on this guy.

To avoid overtones and undertones, it’s possible NHL Utah could turn to Zane Grey, author of the genre classic Riders of the Purple Sage. Salt Lake may become home to Cowboys, Rustlers, Wranglers, Outlaws or Rodeo Clowns. The Coyotes name will stay farther south as the newly bereft Arizona ownership group is expected to be granted an expansion franchise within the next five years. What could go wrong? That diehard core of hundreds of taxpayer fans will surely step up. Lazarus Coyotes would suggest a necessary balancing, an expansion team in the already bloated league’s Eastern Conference. I understand that Atlanta’s primed because the failures of the Flames and Thrashers provided the city a proven hockey town pedigree.                                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.