Arizona Coyotes Get Little Press Coverage From Media
Have you ever noticed how little respect the Arizona Coyotes receive from the local or national media?
I have — and I have plenty of examples to back up my statement. Locally, if you happen to find a story in the Arizona Republic on the front page, or even within the first several pages, covering the Arizona Coyotes, it is a rarity.
You see… this is a four major sports sports town, and the Arizona Coyotes get little respect when it comes to coverage. The news on the team, which seems to outweigh other sports is usually something like the team re-locating, or the team losing its lease to the City of Glendale. There seems to always be a negative connotation to the reporting. The team could win 10 in a row, and it may get some attention, but not if the Arizona Cardinals won, or the Phoenix Suns won.
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The Desert Dogs hockey club even must compete with Arizona State sports for some attention. So, during the fall/winter months, (once baseball has ended) there still is the NFL, NBA, and ASU grabbing most of the headlines.
Now, we all realize that newspapers, TV news all thrive on ratings, copies sold… the bottom line. Money drives everything in this dog eat dog world. Another factor could be fans want to follow a winner. The Arizona Coyotes have only gone as far as the Western Conference finals once in their nearly twenty tumultuous years in Arizona.
So, to prove my point at first to myself, but now my readers… here’s some examples:
Prohockeytalk, or nbscsports.com has this short clip of who the two commentators believe will be the three Pacific Division participants who come out of their division to make the playoffs. Notice how the one commentator makes a derogatory statement about the Arizona Coyotes’s chances.
See what I mean?
Then, next up you need to go quite a ways into this cbssports.com article to find anything on the Arizona Coyotes. When you do, the only thing they found worthy of their attention was this about John Scott getting All-Star votes, eight days ago.
Plenty of mention was given to the BIG Eastern Conference teams, or the reigning Stanley Cup Blackhawks, but no mention of the Arizona Coyotes. Gee, what a surprise!
So, let’s let’s move on to another top sports gathering news site. ESPN. They actually had a story on the team picking up Viktor Tikhonov off of waivers from the Blackhawks. Had the team picked up another player from another team, the story may have not made it to publication. See, BLACKHAWKS = MONEY.
Now the only site to actually do their job and report equally was NHL.COM. And, really folks they almost are forced to do so, since they cover the NHL. They ran the story of the Arizona Coyotes, comeback from a three goal deficit in the third period to tie the game with 17 seconds remaining, forcing overtime.
So, you would think that a local site might actually have some coverage of the local team… right? Correct, but when they do, they have nothing favorable to say either.
I mean the team is going on 20 years in the Valley of the Sun, and still gets very little respect. What do they need to do? Other teams that are horrible (as the Coyotes were last season) still get better attendance and press than the Coyotes do. Toronto, Buffalo, and Edmonton have all had terrible records over the past several years, yet they thrive.
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SO, maybe the NHL really doesn’t belong in the desert. Tell that to loyal Arizona Coyotes fans. Tell that to the players themselves, who love playing here and raising their families here. Tell it to Captain Shane Doan, who has been here the ENTIRE 19 plus years, and has had plenty of opportunity to jump ship to another more successful team.
This team has earned the respect it fails to receive. Don’t just prejudge them, and say “hockey doesn’t belong in the desert.” Go out to a game, or read about the team here, and you may come away with a different opinion. Let’s show the media that this team is exciting to watch and follow, and perhaps they will finally give it some due respect.