On business trips to Arizona, I’ve attended a couple of Phoenix Coyotes games. At a game a few years ago, with one of my boys in tow, we watched Danny Carcillo rack up 34 minutes in penalties for slashing, fighting, and being an all-around thug. It was one of those astonishing performances unique to hockey and its culture.
I guess that makes me sentimental — and hopeful that the financially challenged Coyotes will find a way to survive in the desert, possibly through the franchise’s sale to a Chicago businessman. Yet I’m also pulling for the scrappy Goldwater Institute, a free-market think tank that’s questioning the deal because it may cost taxpayers a bundle. Goldwater’s Darcy Olsen has written about the dispute here, and her activism has drawn the ire of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who almost sounded like he wanted one of his enforcers to pay her a visit:
“I quite frankly don’t know who the people there report to or are accountable to,” Bettman said, “but it fascinates me that whoever is running the Goldwater Institute can actually substitute their judgment for that of the Glendale City Council by, in effect, overturning a duly enacted resolution of the city and one that was enacted in public session.”
Can you imagine that? Someone having the sheer audacity to question the judgment of the Glendale City Council?
Three cheers for the Goldwater Institute.