TEMPE, AZ - (April 15, 204) -- Sportico reports that The Arizona Coyotes are no more. They are being sold and relocated to Salt Lake City in time for the 2024-25 season.
Alex Meruelo sold the NHL franchise to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith in a complicated transaction. The team will temporarily play in the Delta Center. At the same time, a new downtown hockey arena is being built in Salt Lake, the Coyotes players were told by general manager Bill Armstrong before a game in Edmonton Friday night, ESPN reported, confirming a local Phoenix report.
Meruelo bought the team in July 2019 for $425 million, and Sportico recently valued it at $675 million, the lowest of the NHL’s current 32 teams.
NBC Sports is reporting the $1 billion sale is expected to happen between the Coyotes' final game of the 2023-24 season on Wednesday and the start of the playoffs on Saturday, barring unforeseen circumstances, the person said on condition of anonymity because the planned deal has not been announced.
The deal will transfer the franchise's hockey operations first to the NHL and then to Smith, who plans to move the team to Salt Lake City.
The Coyotes played in Calgary on Sunday and return to Arizona State University's Mullett Arena in Tempe for a 7 p.m. Wednesday game against Edmonton. Will those be the franchise's last two games with the Kachina logo on their sweaters? Wednesday night’s game at the Mullett against the same Oilers is expected to be their last in the Valley.
Meruelo’s dream of building a $3 billion arena and retail complex in North Phoenix on the North Scottsdale border has perished despite plans for an auction on June 27 so the club could buy a 95-acre parcel of untreated Arizona state trust land in North Phoenix.
The cost of the project, which would have included in excess of $100 million for infrastructure and $1 billion for the arena, training complex, and theater in the first phase, proved prohibitive.
The team would have been in danger of moving anyway if the Coyotes had lost the auction approved last month by the Arizona State Land Department Board of Appeals.
“If we are not the winning bidder, then we would more than likely have to entertain a relocation of the franchise,” Xavier Gutierrez, the club’s president, said recently in a telephone interview. “This would be our only option.”
If the Coyotes had won the auction and proceeded with the project, the team would have had to play another three seasons in the 4,600-seat Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe.
Gutierrez said the team has lost “a substantial” amount of money playing the past two seasons in the Mullet, declining to place a solid figure on it, although Sportico has been told those losses are in the mid-to-high eight-figure range.
They left an arena in Glendale, Ariz., in 2022 because of a lease dispute.
The franchise has been in and out of bankruptcy and has lost money every single season since it moved from Winnipeg in 1996. The Coyotes played their first seven seasons in what is now called Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix before moving to Glendale and then on to Tempe, where the players were unhappy with the subpar conditions at the Mullett. There, they used makeshift locker rooms outside the main building that cost the Coyotes $30 million to build and practiced off campus at a nearby facility in Scottsdale called the Ice Den.
The Coyotes had hoped to remain in Tempe. Last year, they engaged with the City of Tempe on a plot of land to build a similar concept development. The $2.1 billion project had to go to a series of referenda after approval by the City Council. But this past May, Tempe voters rejected those three ballot initiatives by about 3,500 votes each.
In the case of the North Phoenix plan, there would have been no public vote, and the Coyotes weren’t seeking any public funds. But winning the auction was just the first of what would have been many difficult steps.
Now it’s no longer Meruelo’s problem, and the NHL’s 27-season run in the Valley of the Sun is over.
The team and the National Hockey League aren't talking yet, but Salt Lake City and a prospective owner hungry for a franchise are rolling out the red carpet.
Meanwhile, the AHL affiliate of the Arizona Coyotes, the Tucson Roadrunners, have clinched a spot in the 2024 AHL Calder Cup Playoffs! The return of playoff action to Tucson Arena signals the activation of a WHITEOUT, Arizona hockey’s playoff tradition. If you’re eager to catch the excitement, the Calder Cup Playoff is returning to Tucson on April 19th.
Although the team's future in Tucson has not been confirmed, intense speculation exists that it will be moved to Tempe. Meruelo continues to own the Tucson Roadrunners, and could move the team to Mullett Arena in Tempe, the current temporary home of the Coyotes.