Red is a good color, no?  It’s deep, vibrant, and exciting.  It is a great color for a sports team…unless your looking at said team’s bottom line.  You don’t have to look far in our business world to see that we value profit over pretty much everything else.  But when the business world leaks over into city image, local economy, love of sports, children’s fantasies……profit, or loss there of, can be painful.   We are all aware that the Arizona Coyotes may be heading back up to the land of all things freezing, flat and French. Awareness though, can often be found at the beginning of a sad road, plastered with  self-reflection and regret.

Our family has not attended as many hockey games as we could have this season because life gets so busy, and that is a shame.  It is a real shame considering my kiddos were genuinely excited and interested in watching the games this week, especially considering the games both lasted over 3 hours and had a sad outcome.  One of my best friends has a 3-year-old son that absolutely loves hockey because of the exposure to the Coyotes.  Oliver is about to start ice skating lessons so he can play hockey for real, and that may not be a big deal if you live in Wisconsin, but if you’re Asian living in the desert…..that is nothing short of impressive.

So, as the “powers that be” debate and plan….I. for one, hope that more than a little consideration is placed on the community and all that comes with that.  This community NEEDS the revenue, but it also needs a variety of sports offered, activities with cultural diversity, passion that comes from rooting for the “little team that could” and most of all, perseverance to stay with something that seemed like such a wonderful idea during an economical boom time.  A hockey team in Arizona was a great dream and with a growing economy, it will be again.  For now, we have to hang onto hope that the current owners give some more time to cultivate this team location and ignore the red ink, or Matthew Hulsizer steps up to the plate. So many of us will feel an ample amount of sadness to let go of the dream…..especially when it was just starting to get so good.