White Knight Confirmed!Manitoba NHL Ownership Publicly Declared by DalyThe reaction has been swift to Bill Daly’s statement categorically denying that Winnipeg is the NHL’s exit strategy should the Coyotes run out of ownership options to remain in Arizona.The NHL is trying to position themselves to be able to say two things later. The first NHL position will be that all the media naysayers were wrong, that this young and exciting team will be just fine in Glendale and that they knew this all along, given the ownership receiving final league approval. The second position for the NHL is the scapegoat route. The NHL can say that Glendale council or even Goldwater Institute killed any reasonable hope that the team could remain in such a beautiful city, playing in such a great arena. It is highly unlikely that the NHL turns on either Ice Edge Holdings or Reinsdorf since the league has so many troubled teams and too few ownerships willing to take them off beleaguered hands. Either way, the NHL has put on its’ Teflon-coated suits as neither outcome to the Coyotes story will have any bad press sticking to them.So for the media to expect that the NHL will admit that it does have a backup plan could be easily twisted by some into thinking that the NHL will “run out of one of its’ cities”. This is the last thing the NHL wants to be perceived as, even as relocation may in fact occur and occur outside the US.The media OFFside if it truly expected anything else but the guarded yet categorically negative response Daly offered to any and all proposed exit strategies. Thus hope remains in Manitoba even in the face of Daly’s more than expected denials.However, NHL fans in Manitoba received a tidbit of news that might be lost given the hoopla over Winnipeg as a potential NHL-preferred escape route. Andrew Willis’ Globe and Mail article titled “Coyotes eyeing a Winnipeg den?” posted late last night on the newspaper’s website quoted among others, this portion of Bill Daly’s official statement: more »