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Thursday in a classic "the Post has learned" item, it was reported that rejected New York Islanders bidder Andrew Barroway had set his sights on a different NHL team, the Phoenix Arizona Coyotes. Now it appears a key leg in that report -- that Barroway would drop his $10 million lawsuit against Islanders owner Charles Wang -- is coming true.
The Post said Barroway would purchase 51 percent of the Coyotes, who only finally found a "stable" ownership group a year ago:
As part of the deal, Barroway would agree to drop his $10 million lawsuit against Wang in which he alleges that the Islanders’ owner reneged on an agreement to sell him the Brooklyn-bound franchise.
What? You mean people are prone to use lawsuits as nuisance leverage to get what they want, rather than as ways to enforce the law when they've been truly wronged?
That sounds cra--
Andrew Barroway has dropped his lawsuit against Charles Wang, according to court filing.
— Jim Baumbach (@jimbaumbach) October 3, 2014
...oh.
Barroway's lawsuit sounded sketchy from the get go, both to rational people without J.D.s and to Real Lawyers without eye patches.
The Coyotes would be yet another NHL team Barroway has tried to buy, so maybe he's figured out how to do it. But normally when an Interested Millionaire plays mean with the league, he gets Balsillie'd into oblivion and the league laughs as his business later crumbles.
This time, Barroway may have been gentle enough, or sincere enough, to earn a pass from the league.
Or the league is just that desperate for more funding for the Coyotes.
Or this is just Barroway's associates prematurely leaking yet another story of "advanced negotiations" to buy an NHL team.
In any case, that's his or the NHL's problem. If he's truly ceasing to pursue legal action against Wang, that's one nuisance the Islanders no longer have hanging over them.