There are four things certain in life: death, taxes, change and Coyotes ownership drama. Regardless of how well the team plays on the ice or how much hockey in the desert is growing, there is always a dark cloud to every silver lining.

There are those who staunchly believe hockey cannot, will not and should not work in Arizona. With each passing day and report of the team’s demise, they dig their heels in a little more with an “I told you so” at the ready.

Who can blame them? It feels like a team of Canadian private investigators is working around the clock to dig up any little nugget about the team or city’s finances, trying to connect the dots of a Coyote-shaped police chalk outline that exists only in their imagination.

The Coyotes are not just a hockey team, they are and have been a political pawn. Whether it’s to fit a narrative about how hockey can’t work in places that aren’t buried in snow for three months out of the year or as a scape goat for more than a decade’s worth of bad city management, the Coyotes are to blame for all the hockey world’s problems.

If you have ever talked with a Coyotes fan and they sound a little paranoid, that is why. There is no relaxation in Coyotes land, just a light rest before another storm rears its ugly head.

After years of city council meetings, referendums, legal threats and everything else under the sun, the Coyotes appeared to finally have some stability under the stewardship of IceArizona, who signed a 15-year lease agreement with the City of Glendale about two years ago. While the eventual addition of Andrew Barroway brought about a few storm clouds, it all turned out out be for naught.

For a few months all Coyotes fans had to worry about was how poorly their team was playing on the ice, whether or not their team would win the draft lottery and what the new jerseys will look like. That was until Tuesday night.

Glendale rushed to put a notice up on their website just in time to meet the 24-hour emergency meeting requirement. The notice was for a public meeting to be held to discuss and possibly take action in severing the city’s lease agreement with the Coyotes.

Once again, the Coyotes’ fate would be decided inside Glendale’s council chambers.

While fan after fan and citizen after citizen got up to explain what the Arizona Coyotes meant to them and their community, their sentiments were largely ignored. Even the development manager of Westgate (the entertainment district that surrounds Gila River Arena), Jeff Teetsel, said the city was essentially cutting off its nose to spite its face by trying to force a lease renegotiation with the arena’s anchor tenant.

And at the end of it all, following the council’s 5-2 vote in favor of voiding the lease, mayor Jerry Weiers told the audience that they did not fully understand the issue and their ignorance was standing in the way of proper judgment. Quite a sanctimonious statement from a man who wants to be tased for $10,000 (for charity, of course).

What follows is sure to be a litany of lawyers, paperwork and rulings that serve no other purpose than to get the Coyotes back to where they were on Monday. Except, the damage has already been done.

Successful or not in their injunction and lawsuit, tens of million of dollars in damages have already been incurred. Although it was a long shot at best, the 2017 U.S. World Junior Championship will not be played in Arizona. The ability to garner sponsorship deals and sell season tickets has been negatively impacted. Good luck getting prominent free agents to sign with the Coyotes.

“It’s hard enough to convince people to play for your team when you’re a team that had the year that we had last year, but now you do this and obviously those damages are done self-inflicted by supposedly a partner of yours? That’s when you’re like, ‘Wow, that doesn’t really make sense,'” captain Shane Doan told Arizona Sports.

And this is all for what? Political posturing. Once again the Coyotes are nothing more than a pawn for the mayor and others to use to bolster their political careers.

Is the city in debt? Yes. Are they paying more out to the team to manage the arena than they are getting back in direct revenue? Yes. But this is not a zero-sum game. All the problems that exist now within Glendale’s budget and debt remaining on the arena still exist if the Coyotes move tomorrow.

Fans, pundits and politicians can argue until they are blue in the face about whether or not the arena should have been built in Glendale, or at all, but that does not change the fact that it continues to stand and continues to be in debt.

For a mayor who has never supported the Coyotes, beyond the jersey he dons the few times he’s inside the arena and his lap around the ice on a Zamboni in which he was booed out of the building, to renege on a deal based on flimsy evidence is mind-bogglingly disgraceful. Just ask Jeremy Roenick.

The city basically ran the NFL out of town earlier this year, ending up with nothing more than the Super Bowl game and the security costs to make it happen, and are now trying to run the Coyotes off as well. Glendale’s got game? Time for a new banner.

So once again the Coyotes are fighting for their Arizona lives. It’s really a shame because hockey can work in the desert. The team has just been kicked around and dragged through the mud by poor ownership or poor city leadership, sometimes simultaneously, so many times that it appears everything about hockey in Arizona is a disaster. They’ve really never had a fair chance to make it work.

Every time the team makes a little progress, another PR nightmare comes down the pike. The best slogan the Coyotes ever had was “Hockey the Hard Way.” It appears everything the Coyotes do has to be done the hard way. On the ice or in a courtroom.