
With sincerest apologies to Coyotes fans, who are in an especially difficult position.
Dale Hawerchuk was born in Toronto and played major junior in Montreal. He was drafted by Winnipeg, where he set records for nine years, and then traded to Buffalo. He skated briefly in St. Louis, ended his playing career in Philadelphia, and now coaches in Barrie. And yet it is only in an arena in Arizona that his number 10 hangs, retired, over the ice.
There’s something absurd and slightly grotesque about that banner, as if it represents in one swath of fabric the whole Kafkaesque enterprise that is the Coyotes, the entire labyrinthine edifice of white lies and half-truths that keep the dream no one ever actually dreamt of ice hockey in the desert tenuously alive. It is a monument to a history that didn’t happen, a memory that no one has. It is, fundamentally, the glorification of a technicality. Nearly every other banner that hangs in the NHL gives someone the warm fuzzies; this one gives nearly everybody the heebie-jeebies.
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