Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf says he will field a bid to keep the Coyotes in Glendale, Ariz., on Friday. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)The owner of the Chicago Bulls and White Sox has promised a bid to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona, during a hearing in the team's bankruptcy court case on Monday.
An attorney for Jerry Reinsdorf said via phone that his client would apply to the NHL to buy the team by Friday.
The announcement by Reinsdorf is in line with documents filed in court by the NHL earlier in the day. The league said that it was confident a local bidder would come forward by the end of the week вЂ" exactly when Reinsdorf said he would field a bid for the ailing franchise.
Judge Redfield T. Baum set Aug. 5 as the new deadline for a local sale.
The NHL said it could meet that deadline but the lawyers representing the city of Glendale, Ariz., said it didn't think a new lease agreement could be worked out by then.
If the local deal falls through, Baum set a fallback deadline date in September for Jim Balsillie's bid to move the team to southern Ontario. The NHL is trying to fend off the Canadian businessman's effort to buy the Coyotes through bankruptcy and relocate the franchise to Hamilton.
Balsillie suffered a defeat last week when Judge Baum ruled that his sale deadline of June 29 was too ambitious to resolve the many complex issues the case involves.
The league said in its motion on Monday that it would consider a bid to relocate the team for the 2010-11 season, but only if a local buyer cannot be found.
The NHL is rejecting the option proposed by the Coyotes to accept bids that both aim to keep the team in Arizona as well as those that would move operations.
If relocation bids were considered, the league argued, competitors would have a much shorter time frame to put together a bid than Balsillie had before his May 5 agreement with Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes for $212.5 million US.
'Simply impractical'
The Coyotes said in court filings after last week's setback that PSE Sports & Entertainment, Balsillie's company, would be willing to extend its bid to mid-September.
The NHL responded Monday that trying to buy the team and move it for the start of the regular season in October was "simply impractical."
The league said that 1,190 of 1,230 regular season games for the 2009-10 campaign have been finalized ahead of the official release of the schedule in July.
The NHL hinted in the document on Monday that the Balsillie play has discouraged interest from buyers who would keep the team in its location at Jobing.com Arena in Glendale.
"A team's lifeblood is derived from advance ticket sales, advertising revenue, corporate sponsorships and television revenue, all of which are adversely affected if there is uncertainty as to whether a team will continue to play in its current venue," the league said in its filing.
The NHL had previously said it had received four expressions of interest in the team to remain in Phoenix, but even Baum expressed skepticism they were serious offers in a hearing earlier this month.
For its part, the City of Glendale has argued that anyone trying to relocate the franchise would be on the hook for hundreds of millions in connection with breaking the arena lease.
With files from The Associated Press