Mark Madden's Hot Take: After seeing Penguins consider relocation, feeling deeply for Coyotes fans

With the Arizona Coyotes likely headed to Salt Lake City, it’s easy to dismiss hockey in Phoenix as a failed experiment.

The Coyotes currently play in a college rink that seats just 4,600. Ownership can’t get a new arena built. The Coyotes rarely have drawn big in Phoenix, not even when they played at a venue with a standard capacity. It’s a sport on ice played in the middle of a desert, for heck’s sake.

It makes 100% sense to move the Coyotes.

But I don’t say that lightly.

When the Pittsburgh Penguins tanked in 1983-84 to draft Mario Lemieux by way of finishing dead last in the NHL, they averaged just 6,839 fans per game at Civic Arena.

I was there for just about every game. It was a horror show but, as a great man said, “You’ve got to see the big picture.”

I did. I’ve also seen two bankruptcies, a battle for a new arena, lots of empty seats, plenty of rotten teams and several threatened relocations. There were instances where it would have made 100% sense to move the Penguins.

Not many in Pittsburgh cared. But those who did, like me, cared a lot.

So did Mario Lemieux, thankfully.

If the Coyotes move, there will be several thousand absolutely heartbroken hockey fans in Phoenix. A lot of them did their part. They showed up. They supported. They spent. They cared.

I will feel deeply for those people. That could have been Pittsburgh on at least two occasions.

Instead, the Penguins are a champagne franchise: Five Stanley Cups and a litany of superstar players. Further proof is provided by a spoiled fan base that thinks they’re gratuitously cheated by the odd spell of mediocrity.

When the Penguins won their first Stanley Cup in 1991, I thought of the 6,839 who were on hand in 1983-84. I’m sure most were watching. They certainly deserved it.

Those 4,600 that attend games at Arizona’s college rink don’t deserve to be abandoned. There but for the grace of Mario go the Penguins. To Kansas City, probably.

By the way, if a team can’t get tax revenue to pay for a new arena, it’s going to move. You can bleat civic outrage till your tongue falls out, and you would mostly be right.

But that doesn’t matter. Ante up, or it’s sayonara. That’s the equation.