Sports Radio Interviews

For Coyotes Fans, Anthony LeBlanc = Santa Claus

For Phoenix Coyotes fans, Christmas has come early.  What once might’ve looked bleak for Coyotes fans to keep their franchise in the Phoenix area looks like it is very much a reality.  After a roller coaster ride over the past ten years or so and a lot of drama, it looks as if the Coyotes will stay in the Valley.  The Coyotes arrived in Phoenix from Winnipeg in 1996 and since then it has been a rocky marriage.  After arriving in Phoenix, the team posted six consecutive seasons with a record above .500 and made the playoffs in five of the first six years.  However, things have gone south since then.  The team has not been very competitive; the attendance has dropped, there have been a couple of different ownership groups, there have been talks about possibly moving the team to Hamilton Ontario, the team is floundering financially and it really has turned into a soap opera.  Things got so bad for the Coyotes that the NHL had to come in and take control of the team to stabilize it until a solution was figured out.  Well, now it appears that there are plans in place and a there is a letter of intent to have Anthony LeBlanc, the CEO of Ice Edge Holdings and his group take over ownership of the Coyotes and try to make them relevant again.

Anthony LeBlanc joined XTRA Sports 910 in Phoenix with Bickley and MJ to talk about their purchase of the Coyotes from the NHL, what plans they have for the team moving forward and his desire to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix.

On him being a passionate hockey fan as an owner as opposed to some of the owners from the past:

“It certainly has.  Just to give you a bit of a rundown of a couple of the key principles of our group, two of the guys, Daryl Jones and Keith McCullough, are former collegiate hockey players.  These guys played at Yale.  While I’ve often referred to myself as one of the lone Canadians who really can’t skate…Well I can skate forward, I just can’t stop but I consider myself a tremendous hockey fan.  I’ve been a season ticket holder for the Ottawa Senators, which is where I reside currently for the past five or six years.  Hockey is in our blood and I can tell you that we have been following the franchise, which for most of us on the East Coast it means we’ve had some pretty late nights over the last little while.  We’re about as passionate as you can get when it comes to the sport of hockey.”

On the process of figuring out a new lease:

“Remember we started this process back in I guess it was July and we have spent an extreme amount of time with Ed Beasley and his team over at Glendale and I have to tell you its been a fantastic relationship and we’ve really built a relationship of trust.  Which I think is one of the key ingredients.  People are beginning to wonder why we’ve been the one who have been able to persevere and I think it’s the partnership that we have built with the city.  We’ve had an understanding from the beginning that this was only going to work if it helped the Coyotes, it helped the NHL and most importantly helped the city of Glendale.  One of the things that we’re proud of is, while we still have some tweaks to work on, just some minor things ‘cause we’ve agreed in principle on pretty much everything with the city, the main thing is that we have said straight out that we plan on taking on the remaining timeframe of the original lease which is an additional 26 years.”

On whether he wants to make this a long term commitment:

“My response to that is ask all the questions you want to about the lease because we think it’s very important and it’s a message that we want to get out.  I’m happy to say that no, we do not have an escape clause.  We do not have an out clause.  We are buying this team to keep this team in Glendale and we believe in the future of this franchise in Arizona.”

On what plans they have to improve the product:

“At this point unfortunately, we don’t have specifics that we can discuss.  If you look at the arena for example, I’ve been to a lot of hockey arenas across North America, it’s a beautiful facility but unfortunately it’s not a very exciting place to be in right now.  We want to change the environment of a hockey game.  Again, a handful of us are Canadian so we spent time at Canadian hockey games and that is the environment that we want to bring to Glendale.  We want people to be excited to be associated with this franchise.  From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are an awful lot of things that we have to work on.  Not just season tickets, but we have to work very diligently on sponsorships and selling of corporate suites.  One of the things that we will be doing is well is we have been talking to a lot of organizations that are currently operating franchise and we are looking at doing some joint marketing.  We are pretty excited about what this franchise can do.  There’s a lot of change that has to happen, but I think the most important thing that we have to do is get the word out that we’re here, we’re here to stay and basically apologize to the fans for what they’ve gone through in the past year and really show our commitment.  I think that is job number one and we’re going to start to do that prior to us starting to take complete control of the franchise.”

Listen to Anthony LeBlanc with Bickley and MJ on XTRA Sports 910 here

Tags: Anthony LeBlanc, Ice Edge Holdings, NHL, Phoenix Coyotes