Small Market NHL Teams: Phoenix Coyotes

     Last time I wrote about the Columbus Blue Jackets and how they are an up and coming team with both young and veteran talent. The same can be said for the Coyotes who just drafted Mikkel Boedker, Viktor Tikhonov, and Jared Staal, with Kyle Turris last year.

     The Coyotes have all that young talent plus more. They also have veteran captain, Shane Done, along with Olli Jokinen, Ed Jovanovski, and Derek Morris to all help with leadership. However when you are talking about the size of the team's fan base, they probably rank about last.

The arena seats a lot of people and is a really nice building, but they might sell only about 3/4 of the arena at most each game.

     The Coyotes need to establish themselves as a decent team that is capable of making the playoffs on a regular basis if they want to build a fan base. However, even if they do that I think that they still will sellout only about 10-15 times a year. Phoenix is a terrible area for a hockey team, not just because it is in America, but because it is in Arizona. Where hockey will never become a well-known sport.

     If you are from Arizona and beg to differ, than please post your comment about it on the bottom. Now here are my top six rankings of low market teams in the NHL (based on performance).

1. --------

2. Columbus

3. Nashville

4. Phoenix

5. -----------

6. ----------

Tomorrow I will publish part three of six: the Nashville Predators.

(P.S. If you live in the USA, I'm sorry to say, that it is a really bad country for hockey,  compared to Canada, but that is just the way I feel).