Amid all the speculation whether the Phoenix Coyotes are headed to Quebec City or Seattle, there's a report out of the desert that a group headed by former San Jose Sharks president Greg Jamison is close to a deal to buy the team from the National Hockey League and keep it in Glendale, Ariz.

According to Mike Sunnucks of the Phoenix Business Journal, the NHL is "close to putting the finishing touches on a sale." But if you read between the lines, it appears this is far from a done deal. Sunnucks noted the deal has to go "through final approvals and due diligence as well as through the city of Glendale." It seems strange that the Jamison group has been nosing around the franchise for more than a year and there are still questions of due diligence.

One stumbling block to a sale has been the NHL's insistence that the franchise is worth $170 million. The NHL has set that price tag partly to recoup the money it has poured into the franchise since it bought the club out of bankruptcy in 2009 and partly to maintain the value of some other teams. But the reality is that the Coyotes have the lowest attendance in the NHL with an average of 11,993 fans a game and the city of Glendale is subsidizing the NHL to the tune of $25 million a season.

Sunnucks said the deal could include "some rebates and a fund to cover the team's financial losses."

College Hockey Inc. dumps Kelly: It seemed as if it was business as usual when I ran into Paul Kelly at the Niagara-Canisius college hockey game last Thursday. Kelly was working on details for the annual college coaches' convention and watching college games in Niagara and Schenectady, N.Y. But given a choice of resigning or being fired, Kelly stepped down Monday as the head of College Hockey Inc.

Kelly was the first head of the group that was charged with promoting college hockey in the U.S. He came to the job after being dumped as the executive director of the NHL Players' Association. He made news when he took on the Canadian Hockey League, accusing junior teams of luring players away from U.S. colleges with under-the-table payments.

While he's credited with raising the profile of the U.S. colleges, he reportedly ran afoul of the five league commissioners who felt he was trying to usurp some of their powers. Kelly has been replaced on an interim basis by Nate Ewell, who was the best public-relations person in the NHL before he left the Washington Capitals to join Kelly.

Canadiens guide pilots: Flying in and out of Montreal has become as easy as banking left at Jean Béliveau and heading straight to Maurice Richard.

Five waypoints, or markers, designed to guide aircraft in and out of the region's airports, have been renamed for Canadiens Hall of Fame players. It's not unusual for cities to put a local touch on markers that must be five letters and easy to pronounce. Air-traffic controllers in the Montreal centre that handles Quebec and parts of eastern Ontario have replaced generic names with MORIC (Maurice Richard), LAFLR (Guy Lafleur), GAINY (Bob Gainey), ARVIE (Doug Harvey) and BLIVO (Jean Béliveau).

phickey@ montrealgazette.com