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NHL Board of Directors approves "relocation" of Arizona Coyotes
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- Title
- NHL BOG approves establishment of new franchise in Utah | NHL.com
- Published
- Apr 18 2024
- Word count
- 562 words
This has been in the works and various state of rumor for a while, but it was pretty much finalized today. In essence, the current players, assets (eg contracts and draft picks) and hockey staff will be moved to Utah and will rebrand. The business side will not. The current Coyotes owner will retain the Coyotes branding, and the right to trigger an expansion and buy back the team at the price he's selling this one for, if he obtains an NHL-ready arena within 5 years.
I'm interested to see if the Coyotes will end up being able to resurface in the next 5 years. There's a lot of anger towards Alex Meruelo (current Coyotes owner) for "selling out" this team. There's also a theory that he was somewhat forced by the NHL to do it.
As a Hurricanes fan, there were rumors of relocation 5+ years ago due to our poor attendance. The thought of losing our team sucked, so I really feel for what Coyotes fans are going through. They put up with a whole ton of crap over the years with lousy ownership and today, their team is being ripped from them.
I don't have a ton to add other than to give my condolences to Coyotes fans and decry the loss of one of the sweetest logos in sports franchise history. Why they ever chose to swap it out for this is beyond me.
My buddy is a huge hockey fan who recently moved to the Phoenix area from Chicago, and as a new Coyotes season ticket holder is absolutely devastated by this news. At least the Roadrunners are sticking around, and supposedly moving to Mullett Arena now that the Coyotes are leaving it. And ASU also has a good team that plays at Mullett which he can continue to support too.
And on the silver lining side, Salt Lake City is also only a 2 hour flight away from Phoenix, and the tickets are dirt cheap. In fact, the buddy in question is actually in Provo right now visiting another friend of ours. :P
As a sharks fan, I'm so sorry for the Coyote's fan's loss. teams shouldn't be allowed to be owned by a billionaire. Any sport, especially given that the tax payers are the ones who prop up the arenas and have to deal with the issues of maintaining one.
I am totally out of the loop on this. What happened to the Arizona Coyotes that caused them to be bought out beyond the normal buy/sell stuff?
The short version: A couple of years ago, they were kicked out of their arena in Glendale. There were no other suitable arenas, so they've been playing at ASU's 4400 seat arena for the past 2 seasons. They tried and failed to get the votes to build a new arena in Tempe. Since it wasn't fair to the players to play under those conditions, they still don't have an arena situation figured out, and the owner of the Utah Jazz came willing to buy a franchise and has an arena ready, the league forced them to sell.
Coyotes owner didn't want to sell, so they told him that he could keep the Coyotes branding trigger an expansion without board approval/votes within the next 5 years on the condition that he has an NHL-ready arena built in that time. He will be bidding on state-owned land in June for the project.