Lost in all of the free agency talk on July 1, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly had the following comments in an Arizona Republic article:

The NHL initially said it had four prospective buyers willing to keep the team in place. Daly said there was a "coalescing of that interest behind Reinsdorf's bid as the best chance (to keep the team in Arizona)."

Ten days later, that one word — "coalescing" — could create some serious problems for the NHL:

A United States trustee has expressed concern over the bidding process for the Phoenix Coyotes and wants to know if the NHL "encouraged" potential bidders to drop their pursuit of the team in favour of Jerry Reinsdorf's bid.

And a little further down in the Toronto Star piece:

At the heart of trustee Lashinsky's concerns are previous statements from the league that four potential buyers had expressed interest in the Coyotes. That was followed by a statement from deputy commissioner Bill Daly in a July 1 newspaper article that there has been a "coalescing of interest behind Reinsdorf's bid."

"This begs the question... `Why have these parties left the table?'" she wrote. "Without full disclosure the integrity of the bankruptcy system is lost."

The full excerpt, which is technically written by a lawyer for Lashinsky, reads as so: "Without full disclosure, the integrity of the bankruptcy system is lost. Who were these prospective bidders? Did these parties have a legitimate intent to purchase the team? Why did these local bidders step away from the sale process? Were they encouraged by the NHL to do so?"

In other words, will the phantom bidders please stand up? (And soon, maybe, they'll have to.)

There is going to be a court hearing at 10 a.m. today in Phoenix over a series of disclosure motions, although we don't know precisely what new ground will be covered. The auction deadlines, however, are creeping closer, and what is clear is that both the NHL and the City of Glendale are in more difficult positions than previously due to multiple new enquiries and lawsuits from various watchdogs related to the bankruptcy.

Whereas past sales in places like Nashville and Tampa have been carried out behind closed doors, this one suddenly has an awful lot of eyes on it, potentially making things far more challenging for the league to get its preferred ownership candidate into the owner's seat.

Where this road leads, who knows? But the plot is certainly thickening...