It looks like there might be a local bid put forth by the end of this week to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in Phoenix (or Glendale). This news come a week after bankruptcy court Judge Redfield T. Baum ruled against Jim Balsillie’s attempt (and June 29th deadline) to purchase and move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.

The Coyotes organization lost at least $45 million last season, was last in the league with ticket revenue at $18.4-million, and has lost $316 million since moving to Phoenix in 1996. The organization did not even meet enough of the trigger criterion set by the NHL to receive their full ($15 million) league revenue sharing money, which is the highest in the league. The Coyotes also only averaged about 11,000 fans per game last season at Jobing.com Arena.

In other news…
the Montreal Canadiens were sold to the Molson brothers (mmmm, beeer) by George Gillett for perhaps at much as $555 million.

Over the weekend, our favorite mini-commish Gary Bettman made his first appearance at an NHLPA meeting in Las Vegas. The meeting lasted nearly two hours and the biggest topic of discussion had to do with steroid and performance enhancing drug use in the NHL. Bettman and the players seemed to agree that it wasn’t much of an issue in the league, and nothing was decided on the issue of drug testing in the future. For Bettman… typical talk and PR. Furthermore, the NHL’s TV contract also came up in the meeting… it seems as though players want the league to move to ESPN, but the little man sticks to his original terrible decision to put and keep the games on NBC and Versus.