Phoenix Coyotes: Has Greg Jamison Picked the Perfect Time to Purchase the Team?

Yesterday, it was announced that the NHL had reached a tentative agreement with former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison.  

While there are some steps that still need to be taken, as highlighted in the following exert from NHL.com, it does appear that the league has finally found a way to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in the desert.  

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Jamison's group must formalize the purchase agreement with the League and gain approval from the Board of Governors, while also gaining approval on a lease agreement for Jobing.com Arena with the City of Glendale before the sale can be completed.

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But one might ask, why now? Why, after years and years of tens of millions of dollars in losses, does the Jamison Group feel this is the time?

This season marked the fifth straight that the Phoenix Coyotes have found themselves in the bottom three league-wide in attendance.  

This year specifically they finished dead last in the league with an average attendance of 12,420. The postseason, however, have been a different story.  

Through the first two rounds of the playoffs, the average attendance at the Jobing.com arena in Glendale has been 17,335. And each time Mike Smith stands on his head for a save, Ray Whitney proves again that age is just a number or the team as a whole show the world that they are a real contender, loyalty is born. Each and every one of those additional 5,000 fans attending playoff games could find a new love for the game, and come back for the regular season next year, pulling the franchise into profit in the process (slowly).

While it sounds far-fetched that the Coyotes will actually gain support in the community, remember this: In the year prior to the NHL lockout, the Pittsburgh Penguins were last in the league in attendance, with an average of just 11,877.

Fast forward to the year after the lockout, with a star rookie in Sidney Crosby, and the team is in 20th in the league for attendance with an average of 15,804. Six years later, the Penguins are in a new arena and are one of the best teams in the league with an average attendance of 18,566; 102 percent capacity.  

The point is, winning sells, and it's a snowball effect from here. The Coyotes continue to win and reduce their losses in the process. Once the new ownership steps in this summer, they give the green light to the general manager to spend a little, and next thing you know, the Coyotes have some star players; maybe not a Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, but players who could still attract an audience.  

Once the new talent attracts even more fans, the Coyotes start actually making a profit and selling out regular-season games, and before we know it, the story of the Coyotes struggling to survive in the desert is a thing of the past.