Operation: Save The Coyotes Day.... oh I forget.

Our first rally is planned for this weekend.

To my fellow Coyotes fans, I'd like to say this: Don't worry about the media. They are going to say whatever we do is a failure regardless of whether we had 30 people or 15,000 people. Those of us who are planning to participate in the first Save The Coyotes rally are fully aware that no rally is going to save the team. Especially in this situation. We have no delusions of grandeur. This is a prelimenary rally, we wanted to meet prior to the Coyotes court date on the 19th so that people know we are here and we're starting our efforts. This rally was planned on very short notice. Some people won't be able to get off of work to be there. Some people already had prior commitments. What we hope to accomplish from this particular rally is to come together as a group, share ideas, exchange information, network, etc so that we are able to pool our resources and be united in our efforts. Then we will return for the next White Out rally with a larger group. Yes, the media will be watching so the more people we have in attendance, the better. But regardless of what the media may write about it, its not about the numbers.


Of course Balsillie's group has major support, if we had an entire country at our disposal, we would too. If we had the kind of money to work with that Balsillie does, we would have nothing but good media coverage too. We would have been able to get our website immediately, we would have contacts that could get the word spread like wild fire. Hell, if I had his money I would've already bought the team myself & we wouldn't have to worry about any of this! But you simply cannot compare our campaign to Balsillie's. You cannot even begin to compare the backing of an entire country with a grass roots movement of fans who had a week to digest the news of the team's potential demise, form a group of people willing to battle a dude with that kind of power and plan a gathering of supporters.

Balsillie marketed his campaign to the entire country and a lot of the people supporting him were already bitter due to the Jets being moved from Canada to Phoenix and becoming the Coyotes in the first place. Go read some of the comments on our website if you want to see the kind of venom that is being spewed. I'm sure you guys all know what I am talking about, its not the first time we've had to deal with this as Coyotes fans. One thing I can certainly promise you is that if my team ever does leave, (which I hope isn't the case) I will not be so bitter about it 12 years after the fact that I spend all my time trying to bash the people who are their fans now.


When discussing this in a recent interview, the interviewer said to me: "Oh yes, they are such passionate fans!" My first reaction was "Yes, such passion". I have since changed my opinion. That is not passion. Passionate hockey fans would want to share their love of hockey with others. Passionate hockey fans want to see the spread of hockey in non-traditional markets. Selfish hockey fans think only one country deserves to have all the hockey teams to themselves. Selfish hockey fans want to blame the fans for the financial difficulties of a franchise when in fact it had more to do with poor ownership and management decisions. They don't educate themselves on the facts because they don't want to know the truth. If they did, they would have to admit to being wrong.

The Jets left Winnipeg because there was not enough corporate sponsorship and at the time they did not want to build a much needed new arena for the team. Not because of anything that the fans did. They had times of poor attendance, like every other team does every now and then. The Jets will not return to Winnipeg because the area still lacks that needed corporate sponsorship. Will they never have a team again? Who knows. I hope they can have another team some day. But for now that is not our concern. The past is the past and we are living in the here and now. We appreciate our team's history but with all due respect, we plan on keeping them here...