According to a report in the Phoenix Business Journal, officials at Renaissance Sports and Entertainment (RSE) say that they are done tweaking the arena management deal they've offered the city of Glendale, Arizona. So that's the decision Glendale city council members have to make: Do we accept this shitty, shitty deal that'll cost taxpayers millions, or do we let the Coyote's go, costing the taxpayers millions? We'll get their answer July 2.

But here's a question for the NHL? If you can't make money in Phoenix with a mere $6.5 million annual taxpayer subsidy (they want $15 million), why the hell would you want to move a money-losing team to Seattle, a city with no established hockey fan base, to play in an aging arena that offers as few as 11,000 unobstructed hockeys seats, with no public subsidy at all?

I've got a few thoughts.

First of all, you've got to understand that a big chunk of the problem making the numbers work in Phoenix has to do with the weak financial position of the prospective local owners. RSE does not have deep pockets, meaning its $170 million proposed acquisition of the team (currently owned by the league) would be highly leveraged. Some of that money would be borrowed from the league itself, but the bulk of the money would come from a private lender that is insisting on the $15 million annual city subsidy to collateralize the loan—a loan on which RSE would reportedly pay 9 percent interest. That is why RSE is done tweaking the deal. They have no room to tweak.

However state-of-the-art Glendale's Jobing.com arena may be, and however dedicated the Coyotes' fan base, a highly leveraged cash-poor ownership group taking control of a team that is losing an average of $20 million a year is a recipe for disaster. Even if the city council signs the deal, it's hard to see the Coyotes surviving much beyond RSE's five-year escape clause.

So how would KeyArena be any better? First of all, it would be different owners: a couple of really rich dudes who are so jonesing for a professional sports team that they are reportedly willing (and more importantly, able) to pay the NHL $50 million more than RSE. This ownership group can afford to lose money as they build up the fan base, build a new arena, and build up the value of the team. And in that context, moving to Seattle right now, even with a less than adequate KeyArena, might make a lot of business sense.

The assumption had always been that Chris Hansen would first acquire an NBA team, then build a new Sodo arena, and only then might we get an NHL franchise. But flipping that chronology around makes a ton of sense for the NHL. Moving a team here now would give the NHL a window of opportunity to build a local fan base without having to compete with the NBA for public affection. Move an NHL team here immediately after the Sonics return, and hockey becomes an afterthought.

Furthermore, assuming the team can afford to lose money for a few years at KeyArena—which arguably has too small a hockey seating capacity to ever be profitable—this temporary scarcity could be leveraged to boost demand and inflate the sense of support in the same way the Sounders did by closing off sections of CenturyLink Field. The Sounders thrived in the wake of the NBA's departure. The "Metropolitans" could thrive in the wake of Seattle's second rejection by the NBA. There may well be a psychological advantage to moving into Seattle now while local sports fans are still angry at NBA commissioner David Stern for denying us the Sacramento Kings.

As numbers guru Nate Silver points out, Seattle is arguably the top potential US hockey market currently without an NHL team. No doubt KeyArena is far from perfect. But the timing may be.