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Jerry Reinsdorf officially pulls out of running to buy Coyotes

Image (1) 1-reinsdorf-thumb-250x375-10994.jpg for post 1471

Things seemed to be too quiet out of Arizona lately concerning the Coyotes so it’s high time something happened. Word came down early Tuesday morning that Jerry Reinsdorf’s group to buy the Coyotes, Glendale Hockey, has officially and totally pulled out of negotiations for the team.

In the statement, the Reinsdorf group, known as Glendale Hockey, called the decision to pull out “a difficult one because of our respect for the mayor, the council and management of the city.”

“Ultimately we came to the conclusion it was time to move on,” Reinsdorf said. “We were happy to serve a critical role for the City to keep the team in Glendale and we look forward to assisting the city in the future on other projects both as a company and individually.”

The statement concluded with the Reinsdorf group wishing “Glendale, its citizens and the fans of the Coyotes the best.”

This is all likely just window dressing for the Glendale city council which will be holding a private vote on Tuesday evening to approve Ice Edge Holdings for a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to give them exclusive negotiating rights for the Coyotes. Reinsdorf and his group getting out of the way is just a mere formality to pass the torch to them. The downside here, however, is that it leaves Ice Edge Holdings as the only group left available to buy the team. If you’d like to read the details of the MOU between Glendale and Ice Edge, feel free to scope it out here (PDF). One side fun part to the MOU is that if Ice Edge wins out, the team will then be known as the Arizona Coyotes. Nothing screams “success” like emulating the NFL’s Cardinals.

Should Ice Edge Holdings be the group to buy the team and do so by June 30th, they’ll keep the City of Glendale off the hook for $25 million dollars the city has set aside to make sure the NHL, the Coyotes current owners, aren’t on the hook for the team’s financial losses. After all, what’s worse than one owner losing $25 million? 29 other owners chipping in to cover losing $25 million.

The doom and gloom aspect to all this now is that should Glendale, the NHL and Ice Edge not find a way to come to some agreement, this could put an end to the Coyotes run in Arizona as the NHL has now made no bones about looking for another owner who is willing to move the team. David Thomson and his True North group are the most talked about potential buyers as they wish to move the team back to Winnipeg.