After 28 years, the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes have been put out of their misery.
And ours, too.
The team officially announced it will leave the Valley of the Sun and head north to Salt Lake City. In a complex deal, Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will sell the team to the league for $1 billion dollars. The league will turn around and sell the team to Ryan Smith, owner of the Utah Jazz and Real Salt Lake, for $1.3 billion, the extra $300 million split between the other 31 teams in the NHL as a relocation fee. Meruelo will retain the branding of his former team and will be the first in line to get a brand-spanking-new expansion team if he can shore up a new arena in five years.
One may come away from this blog post thinking I hate the Arizona Coyotes. They are a division rival of my beloved Colorado Avalanche, but hate is too strong of a word. My thoughts on this team are something we all learned from Sesame Street, “one of these things is not like the other.”
Long ago, I established “the Shane Rule,” which states that if you live in a place that shuts down after getting an inch of snow, you don’t get a hockey team. However, locating teams in warm weather destinations was the trend in 1990s NHL. Expansion teams sprung up in Anaheim, Tampa, Miami, Nashville, and Atlanta, while established teams bolted for Dallas, Raleigh, and Phoenix. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman seemed hell-bent on making the sport of hockey cool in snowbird states. It was hockey’s version of Manifest Destiny.
To understand the rise, for lack of a better word, and fall of the Arizona Coyotes, one has to go back to the genesis of the team. The original Winnipeg Jets were purchased by Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke in 1995 with the original intent to move the team to Minneapolis, a mere two years after Norm Green ripped the North Stars away from the Cities. The new ownership group couldn’t make a deal with the Target Center, so they needed to find a new home. Phoenix seemed to fit into the league’s new Southern Strategy.
Gary Bettman was about to invent desert hockey.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Coyotes started with exciting news. Former Chicago Blackhawks star Jeremy Roenick signed a five-year, $20 million contract with the newly minted Yotes. Along with Rick Tocchet (who would later become the head coach of the Coyotes) and Keith Tkachuk, the newest franchise looked to be a serious contender in the West.
That was the good news.
The bad was that they were slated to play at the then-American West Arena. The then four-year-old stadium was initially designed to be a basketball-only arena. Why? Because who in their right fucking mind would put a hockey team in the middle of a desert? As a result, 4,500 seats would have an obstructed view of the game.
On top of that, the Coyotes introduced what could only be described as the most hideous jersey in the history of organized sports. It had a Southwestern flavor with colors that seemed to be selected by taking random crayons from a box and a Native American-stylized coyote holding a hockey stick. The jersey looked like it was designed by someone out of touch trying too hard to make something cool in the 1990s.
The team made the playoffs in five of the first six years in Arizona, not once advancing to the second round. The team found a new home in Glendale, and ownership changed hands a few times, including a group that involved Wayne Gretzky. The Coyotes faced hard times, hemorrhaging money since the relocation from Manitoba. The team reportedly lost $200 million over a seven-year period. To keep the team solvent, the NHL stepped in to shore up some of the shortfall.
Jerry Moyes, then the team owner, had filed for bankruptcy after losing $35 million during the 2008-09 season. When asked about the reported shortfall, Bettman said, “They’re going to get through the season just fine.”
Some potential scenarios would have taken hockey out of Arizona. Canadian businessman Jim Bastille was willing to spend some of that BlackBerry money to take the team to Hamilton, Ontario. There were talks with True North Sports and Entertainment about bringing the prodigal team back to Winnipeg. Ultimately, the NHL took control of the team, hoping to find a competent ownership group. The league tried to sell the team for four years, but deal after deal fell through. They literally couldn’t give the team away. Finally, in 2013, Renaissance Sports & Entertainment came through to snap up the team. The team would rebrand itself as the Arizona Coyotes to usher in a new era of peace and stability.
However, the troubles continued for the team. RS&E’s local managing team, IceArizona found themselves in court after reneging on a deal to sponsor a polo championship for five years. IceArizona also fell short of projected revenues to pay Glendale on parking for non-hockey events. To get help, IceArizona sold controlling interest to Andrew Barroway, who would buy out the rest of IceArizona’s ownership of the team a few years later.
There was also turmoil brewing over where the team would play. Glendale backed out of the long-term lease with the team because the team violated the terms of the original 15-year deal. The team announced they plan to build a 16,000-seat stadium near the Arizona State University campus in Tempe. Less than a year later, the university backed out.
In 2019, Barroway sold a majority stake in the team to Meruelo. Since taking over the team, Meruelo had to pay $1.3 million in back taxes, got his team evicted from the Gila River Arena for failure to pay rent, recent allegations that the team has not paid its hotel bills, and plagued by failed stadium proposal after failed stadium proposals. For the last two seasons, the Coyotes have played, ironically, on the campus of ASU, at the 5000-seat and perfectly named Mullett Arena.
The last-second Hail Mary heave into the endzone for a new stadium is the auction for a 95-acre parcel of land in north Phoenix. That public auction, however, doesn’t happen until June 27, and there is no guarantee that Meruelo will even win the land. Even if he does, many obstacles stand in the way of continuing the dream of desert hockey. With no solid plans for a new stadium, the team will head north to Salt Lake City.
There is no one person to blame for all of this. The relocation to Phoenix never should have happened. There has been no long-term plan for this team since the relocation 28 years ago. There has been bad ownership, bad teams, and bad business deals. Christ, even Gretzky couldn’t turn the team around. However, if you want to look at one constant in the ballad of the Arizona Coyotes, it’s been the fans. Since at least the 2011-12 season, the Coyotes have finished in the bottom three of attendance every season, and have never averaged higher than 86% capacity, except when they played in the broom closet that’s dressed up as an NHL venue.
Also, a heaping helping of blame has to go to Gary Bettman, who ignored the red flags Arizona has been showing for its hockey acumen. His belief that the 11th largest media market could be a home for hockey results from one part delusion and two parts hubris. The league has pushed all in for this boondoggle of professional sports and lost.
And the stupid part is that Bettman is willing to do this all over again. In the hockey equivalent of “stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen,” part of this deal is that Meruelo, the guy who couldn’t even pay his hotel bill or for the team’s stadium, will get priority to own a new team right away if he can secure a stadium.
Yeah. That guy!
Are you pissed yet, Hartford? Quebec?
The league has bent over backwards to keep this team afloat because of “potential.” I have had friends, rightfully so, host interventions for my same attitude about toxic relationships.
In short, Arizona hockey has been a failure. Some will point out that the United States’ best hockey player, Auston Matthews, came from youth hockey in Arizona spawned by the Coyotes. But in the grand scheme of things, hockey and the Grand Canyon State should stay the hell away from each other.
Ian Shane is the author of In Ten Years, Postgraduate and Radio Radio and creator of the blog, Liner Notes. His “almost memoir,” Sundry Notes of Music, is now available in paperback and Kindle. He currently lives in Denver with his cats.