Jim Balsillie Still Holds Hope for Coyotes

The old saying "third time's the charm" doesn't appear to apply to Jim Balsillie.

The very rich Canadian gentleman has seen yet another attempt to buy an NHL team for his friends in Hamilton go up in smoke. Monday, a bankruptcy court judge in Phoenix rejected Balsillie's bid for the Coyotes, clearing the way for the franchise to stay in Phoenix. The Coyotes join the Penguins and Predators as teams Balsillie has unsuccessfully tried to buy and move to Hamilton, Ont.

Balsillie's people remain confident, however, that the team could be moved in time for the upcoming NHL season.

In a news conference held in a downtown Toronto hotel Tuesday morning, Richard Rodier repeated his view that the co-CEO of Research In Motion remained in the running for the team. And he contends there is still a chance that team could play in Copps Coliseum this fall, despite the ruling from an Arizona bankruptcy court judge on Monday.

There would be a lot of hoops to jump through, first.

The league has to approve Balsillie's purchase. The league still has the right to seek a relocation fee, which should be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Not only that, but now Balsillie has to get someone to order the league to do these things.

Right now, Balsillie's purchase is null and void, and the league has the ability to move forward in their pursuit of a local buyer for the team.

For Balsillie, this is another difficult blow to his dream of NHL ownership. You could argue that -- again -- he went about things the wrong way, trying to shoehorn himself into the fraternity by buying a team as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.

Since Balsillie has never done anything the "conventional" way, we don't know how well-received he would be among the league's other owners. If he were to remove himself from the role of "bully" and do things the right way, he might have a better shot of getting a team in Hamilton.