Hey, it’s been a while since we checked in with the Arizona Coyotes, whose then-owner Anthony LeBlanc in 2015 objected to not getting paid by the city to operate their own arena by saying he was talking to lots of other cities, then signed another lease extension in 2017, then signed another one this January. What’s the latest?

Arizona Coyotes officials have confirmed the team will stay in Glendale for another season as the team draws larger crowds to Gila River Arena than it has in years.

“We will absolutely play the 2020-2021 NHL season in Gila River Arena,” Coyotes CEO Ahron Cohen said in a statement on Friday.

Coyotes attendance was indeed up ever so slightly last year, and they’re currently only fourth-worst in the NHL, ahead of the Florida Panthers, New York Islanders, and Ottawa Senators. The team’s new owner has said that staying n Glendale without a new arena would be “difficult,” and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said last summer that the current situation is “not viable long-term,” but at a certain point actions speak louder than words, and the fact of the matter is that we’re now going on five years since LeBlanc threatened to leave town if he didn’t get to keep his sweetheart arena lease, and the team is still there, with no serious relocation talks underway that anyone has publicly reported on.

I never want to suggest that pro sports teams’ move threats are entirely a bluff: They do move on occasion, though it’s way more common in the NFL where local cable market size isn’t an issue and there are a lot fewer tickets needing to be sold; and Phoenix has never really been a hockey hotbed, so there are arguably other markets the Coyotes could viably leave for. Still, it’s a good reminder that the number of teams that move is a tiny, tiny fraction of the number whose owners threaten to move, and in almost every case there’s a long, drawn-out negotiating process before the moving trucks are actually packed up. So as memorable an image as the Baltimore Colts packing up their Mayflower vans may be, usually playing hardball over a lease doesn’t result in losing a team “overnight,” so maybe we can all stop using that word?

Arizona Coyotes owner Andrew Barroway renewed his team’s lease on its Glendale home arena for another season on Friday, just as he did last year, and just as his predecessor Anthony LeBlanc did two years before that. This would seem to put the final nail in the coffin of any notion that the team has lots of other cities eager to throw money at it for an arena, as LeBlanc insisted more than three years ago, and so maybe Glendale can ratchet down its threat level a bit from DEFCON 1.

At least, it would seem so to me, but clearly I do not understand the modern journalism, because here is how the Arizona Republic reported it:

But a one-year lease does nothing to secure the team in the city, or the state, for the long term.

The team has looked to Phoenix and the East Valley in recent years, and there is speculation that the franchise will leave the state altogether, perhaps for Houston, if it doesn’t get the investment it’s looking for.

Perhaps for Houston. Not that Houston isn’t a big city — it is, I’ve checked! — but if Barroway or LeBlanc or anyone had really wanted to move to Houston, they could have done so anytime in that last three years, so this is hardly some new looming threat. In fact, if you click through that Republic link, you get to a Houston Chronicle story theorizing that now that the Coyotes are moving to the Central Division it would make it easier for them to move to Houston, which is one of those typical fan conspiracy theories that ignores the fact that no team in any sport has ever moved somewhere just to make divisional alignments more convenient, so come on, seriously.

The Coyotes absolutely could move out of Glendale, and even out of Arizona altogether, and maybe it would even arguably be a good idea, given its perpetually poor attendance figures. (A good idea for its owners and the NHL, I mean, not for poor Coyotes fans who’ve suffered through this mess and then would end up with bupkis.) But the team re-upping on a new one-year lease is not a crisis, it’s a sign of an emerging new equilibrium. And talk of putting money into arena upgrades to lure the team owners into signing a longer-term lease, as Glendale City Manager Kevin Phelps has suggested, is only worth it if the city can get a long extension in exchange for not too much in upgrade cash — and, ideally, increased rent to help pay back the upgrade costs from new team revenues.

Trying to negotiate something that can work for all sides is always a good thing. Just so long as you keep in mind that at the end of the day you can always walk away from the table if it’s too rich for your blood, especially since it seems like the worst-case scenario, in the short term at least, is likely to be more of these annual Arizona Republic scare headlines when the team renews its lease for yet another year.

I’m been out of commission the last couple of days with the flu — if you want an early indication that this year’s flu vaccine may not have been particularly well-targeted, I’m your data point — but it looks like I didn’t miss too much stadium and arena action. Except, that is, for a truly impressive non-threat threat from Arizona Coyotes management about new owners potentially moving the team.

Ever since it was revealed last year that Coyotes owner Andrew Barroway was looking to sell anywhere from 49% to 100% of his stake in the team, there has been speculation that new owners might want to relocate it to someplace where people actually want to buy hockey tickets. So new team president Ahron Cohen issued a New Year’s statement that, news outlets reported, declared “Arizona is our home” and reaffirmed the team’s desire to stay in the state.

Except the key section of Cohen’s statement said nothing of the sort:

“Recently, you may have read reports about a potential ownership transaction. As I have said for months, we will continue to explore investment opportunities to better assist our team in achieving our long-term goals and organizational vision. This process has at its core one key pre-condition: any investment in our team must be laser-focused on helping the Coyotes achieve a long-term sustainable arena solution here in Arizona,” Cohen wrote.

“Every potential investment opportunity we evaluate and every business deal we consider is predicated on making our franchise successful here in Arizona for decades to come. Arizona is our home. We love it here. And we love playing for you, the very best fans in the NHL.”

That is not, under any possible reading, we will only sell to new owners who will promise to stay in Arizona, but rather, it’d be a real shame if anyone was to set fire to those paratroopers, colonel.

Now, does this mean it’s any more likely that the Coyotes are going to move if they’re sold? No. Less likely? Also no. In fact, it’s exactly the same thing you would expect team execs to say regardless of what their plans are for the team — or if they have no idea what their plans are, but they just want to keep their options open. So this makes the team’s current ownership group look concerned about fans while also not hamstringing future owners in any way — other than not to turn down a free arena in the Phoenix area if one is offered — which is just rhetorical evil genius, man.

And as a reminder, in case anyone has forgotten: Yes, the Coyotes already play in a largely free arena in the Phoenix area, one they were reasonably happy with until a conflict-of-interest loophole allowed the city of Glendale to terminate the lease that paid the team $8 million a year to play there. I’m sure there’s a clever, pithy way to describe the interlocking ironies at work here, but I’m still getting over being sick, so I’ll have to leave that as an exercise for my readers.