The Phoenix Coyotes never found their place in the universe, through two cities, two arenas and five playoff appearances in 12 years. So now they are going to be the new California Golden Seals.

And good luck tracing their whereabouts.

The Seals were part of the Next-To-Original Six, a franchise that offered little of lasting use save white skates, and found their oblivion quietly. They moved to Cleveland, which merged with Minnesota, which moved to Dallas, which
Which brings us to the Coyotes, who declared bankruptcy Tuesday, got an offer from the peripatetic Jim Balsillie to buy the team and move it to Southern Ontario, and then became involuntary wards of the NHL, who don't want Balsillie as part of their exclusive, if occasionally daft, treehouse party.

These are the same Coyotes who NHL commissioner Gary Bettman assured us were as safe as houses in their current location. Now they are the league's Montreal Expos, in search of a Washington to move to.

Which, of course, they have. It's called Southern Ontario, just far enough away from Toronto to be not Toronto, but close enough to Toronto to make the Maple Leafs management rise on its hind legs and bark maniacally at the threat to their hegemony.


Now we wish no ill of the Phoenix market, and if someone wants to take the team and keep it in Phoenix, well, good on their fathers as the Irish like to say. But the team has been on Craigslist for months with no takers, which is why owner Jerry Moyes cried uncle Tuesday and entered into negotiations with Balsillie, who has been prevented from buying the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators in previous attempts.

Man, dude must have some seriously funky breath.

Actually, this is the league's continued fight to keep the Blackberry billionaire from muscling his way into LeafWorld, even though most people in a position to know see Southern Ontario as the most logical, most lucrative and most obvious place to put a franchise. Bettman is protecting the board room, as is any commissioner's first responsibility, but there comes a point at which the obvious must become too obvious even to such a devoted defender of the status quo.

Balsillie isn't a rouser of rabble in the way that Mark Cuban is to the NBA office. He isn't a mad spender like the Steinbrenner Boys. He isn't a walking lawsuit like Al Davis used to be. He just wants to own an NHL team in the best market on the continent for such an enterprise, and while it may discomfort the Leafs and league's control of its franchises, it is still the right thing to do for one very compelling reason.

The disturbing alternative is folding the franchise.

Again, we assume that nobody wants to buy the Coyotes and keep them in Phoenix, in an arena far from the city center in an area that really never found its inner hockey. We further assume that there is no other place that so craves the Coyotes, despite the perennial interest in Kansas City, the league's second-ranking stalking horse.

And even if Kansas City were eager to be a player again, it still isn't the market Southern Ontario would be without even trying. It would be growing the game, because the game is strongest when in markets that long for it.

Maybe this is just a form over substance issue, with Balsillie trying to muscle the league into doing what's best for everyone involved. Fine. We get that might not sit well in Bettman's craw, given that it certainly doesn't sit well in that of Leafs president Richard Peddie.

But this is one of those moments where Bettman ought to use his silver-tongued genius and find a way to extract enough shut-up-and-welcome-to-the-neighborhood money from Balsillie to present to the Leafs. It's one of those good-for-the-game things that outweigh whatever breaches of protocol the league sees in Balsillie's persistence.

Or perhaps he would rather have updated versions of the California Golden Seals or Montreal Expos, just to name two teams that died ignominious, time-consuming, money-consuming and market-consuming deaths.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.