Making Sense of the Arizona Coyotes' Move to Utah (2024)

It's finally happening. After years of the Arizona Coyotes franchise insisting everything would be fine amid relocation rumors and failure to secure a worthy home, the team is expected to move.

It's been reported that Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will sell the team back to the NHL for $1 billion. Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith will then purchase it from the league for $1.2 billion and move it to Salt Lake City.

According to reports, Meruelo didn't want the players to continue playing in an arena that wasn't up to NHL standards. His group is still in the running for a tract of land to build an arena in north Phoenix, but the auction has been pushed back to June.

The NHL and the NHL Players' Association, with first-year labor expert Marty Walsh at the helm, had repeatedly discouraged the team from continuing to play at the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena.

In some ways, this had been expected for years, with attendance issues, reports of a toxic workplace and failure to find a permanent home. In other ways, this is happening extremely quickly, with Salt Lake City emerging as the relocation destination after other possibilities have been floating around much longer.

Let's try to make some sense of what we know and what we don't, and say goodbye to the Coyotes as their last home game looms.

The reasons the Coyotes are moving span decades and involve complexities, none of which exist in a vacuum.

The simplest, most urgent reason is Meruelo and his group's inability to secure a suitable NHL arena anywhere in Arizona after leaving Gila River Arena (now Desert Diamond Arena) in 2022.

The inability to do so, though, is multifaceted and largely stems from a combination of ownership's consistent dysfunction and a lack of sustained momentum for interest and growth of the club in Arizona.

The Coyotes have failed to land in the top half of NHL attendances since 2001, and they've made playoffs just once in the last 11 seasons. Just as the club seemed to gain momentum, whether through exciting prospects or earning a playoff spot, it felt like off-ice drama always reared its ugly head.

Stability is necessary for a successful NHL franchise, and so is general goodwill and trust in ownership when seeking taxpayer dollars to fund the venues and locations to make a franchise work in a small market in the Southwest.

Arizona taxpayers have been extremely wary of the Coyotes' management for good reason, considering reports of Meruelo's dysfunctional workplace culture and the team not paying various bills in various situations to the point of getting kicked out of their own Glendale arena.

Diehard fans deserved a fair shot to make the Phoenix area a hockey hotbed. They never got that shot with this ownership group and constant drama surrounding a team that showed some glimpses of potential on the ice but could never quite make the actual hockey itself click for the past two decades.

This situation came to a breaking point with the prospect of having to play at the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena again indefinitely, and it was time for a fresh start for the sake of employees, players, the NHL and fans alike.

From the outside, it has felt like bids for NHL expansion and relocation have been coming from Houston and Atlanta more consistently than anywhere else over the past few years.

So, when did Salt Lake City emerge and why is this suddenly the direction the league is taking?

Well, follow the money and follow the urgency. A rich, established owner in the area wanted to buy the team immediately, and it seems like he is more than willing to let the NHL and commissioner Gary Bettman have some considerable control over the whole operation.

There's also an arena already built in Utah: the Delta Center. Though it's old and Smith has already mentioned it'll be temporary while Utah builds a new arena, it beats Mullett Arena.

Although this has seemed sudden, Smith and Bettman have been in contact for years, as Smith has shown varying levels of interest in buying an NHL team and then this opportunity presented itself. He was also willing to acquire the team via relocation as opposed to expansion and an expansion draft, while other suitors were less willing to give up an expansion draft opportunity.

Now, let's think about the city itself.

Salt Lake City has a (financially) successful NBA team, is touted as a worldwide destination for skiing and winter sports and it's a strong contender to host the 2034 Winter Olympics.

One assumes the Olympic bid and its anticipated revenue make the creation of a new arena and more amenities financially easier, and the city might get a venue covered with it.

Here's where things get interesting: The NHL and Coyotes management both see potential for a future return to the desert.

According to Emily Kaplan of ESPN, the deal allowed Meruelo to retain the Coyotes' team name and intellectual property in hopes of "reactivating" the franchise.

Kaplan also reported that it's expected Meruelo will have the chance to own a Phoenix-based NHL expansion franchise if he builds an arena for the team within five years. This deal would require him to pay back the $1 billion he's acquiring in the sale.

While this seems straightforward enough, we're talking about Meruelo, who was repeatedly overconfident in his abilities to get an arena over the past few years. We are talking about the Meruelo who, with the imminent threat of relocation, could only manage a non-permanent Coyotes residence in a college arena.

We're talking about a pristine arena and entertainment district proposal submitted in 2021, taken to vote last May, a proposal Tempe Mayor Corey Woods called "the best sports deal in Arizona history." Tempe voters showed up in record numbers to turn it down.

Thinking optimistically, maybe Tempe wasn't the right place (although that undeveloped plot of land would have been perfect for the project). Thinking pessimistically, which Arizona city will be open to a Meruelo-owned franchise after years of tumultuous dealing and off-ice drama?

According to Kaplan's report, Meruelo is still seeking to win the June 27 auction for a 95-acre parcel of land in north Phoenix, where he intends to build an arena, a practice facility, a theater, housing units and retail.

Maybe he'll win, but if we want hockey to return to Arizona and succeed, the best bet might be in someone else's hands.

Finally, here are some words from the 'Yotes fans as we reflect on the memories from the franchise's time in the desert and what the fanbase is going through.