Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City

[Three Stars]

[FLPensFan]

Earlier in the day, it sounded like there were two plans in place: 1 for the NHL to continue in Arizona at Mullett Arena this year, and a 2nd backup plan of relocating (possibly temporarily) to Salt Lake City.

Coyotes owner has a bid in to purchase land north of the city, but that land vote/auction doesn't happen until late June.

Sounding like the NHL decided it didn't want to wait that long for a decision, nor wait 3 more years for a new arena to be built. Last I heard was that Salt Lake City would likely be paying about 1.2B for the franchise, which included the relocation fees.

[Three Stars]

The biggest loser in all of this are the other GM. They might have lost their first and best place to dump contracts to gain cap space.

[brwi]

What I was reading on The Athletic a couple of days ago is that the NHL would buy the Coyotes from bozo Alex Meruelo for 1B(ouch!) and then immediately sell it to Ryan Smith in Salt Lake City for 1.3B and start play in the fall at the existing Delta Center that will hold around 11K for hockey and stay there until their proposed big new shiny complex gets built. The owners would be sharing the 300M difference amongst themselves so you can bet they'll be A-OK with this deal.

The Phoenix area probably ends up with an expansion team one day in the future(after Houston) not owned or having anything to do with Meruelo. Bettman loves the Phoenix market and the numbers are there for a NHL team to be successful if they put the arena in the right place, but it will take much better ownership than what they have now or in the past. Same could be said for Atlanta, another market that needs decent ownership and the common sense to build the arena where the fans are which sure isn't downtown Atlanta.

[Three Stars]

Anybody got any name suggestions?

I say their logo can be a bunch of tiny people sitting around a meeting table. The Salt Lake City Itty Bitty Committee.

[Admin]

The Prophets, Saints, Apostles, etc.

Or Jazz?

[DelPen]

Delta Center is horrible for hockey but it will make more gate than ASU. Does it sound like the new arena is a done deal once they get a team? So we are looking at maybe opening up in 2026?

As far as a name, Grizzlies is cool but already taken by their ECHL team. They could keep Coyotes since they are all over Utah today. Cougars would be a good name.

[penny lane]

The vagabonds

There but for slots go the pens.

[brwi]

Done deal. They are being sold and moved and will be playing in Utah 2024-2025.

[KG]

Done deal. They are being sold and moved and will be playing in Utah 2024-2025.

Good. It’s ridiculous there was an NHL team playing in a 5,000 seat arena.

At least it’s relocation and not expansion.

[DelPen]

No players on the Yotes have a NMC, if any did I wonder if they could void their deal due to relocation?

And I also didn’t realize Shea Weber still has 2 years left at $7.85 million of LTIR. It’s been a joke how some teams have been a bad contract dumping ground like this.

[brwi]

The athletic did a major rewrite on their story and changed it to it's not 100% a done deal blah blah blah and sources aren't all in agreement on what exactly GM Bill Armstrong told the players prior to their game, instead of the original story that had Armstrong telling the players the team was indeed moving to Utah and the situation was a done deal. Of course, The Athletic makes no mention of how they changed their story within a few hours from what it was originally.

Sounds like it's probably happening but not 100% final as of yet.

[Three Stars]

[DelPen]

I saw SEG wants to renovate the current arena to be better for hockey. Right now they have bleachers that get pushed in when not setup for basketball. The arena in Charlotte and Brooklyn are similar but not nearly as bad as SLC.

For basketball it’s great, you are right on top of the court but there’s 12,000 unobstructed view seats and another 2,000 that are obstructed to some degree vs 18,000 basketball. At some point they did something during renovation because the IHL broke a record for attendance for their finals in 1996 at 17,381 people so it seems like they redid the lower level seats to make it better for basketball. Not sure if they can reconfigure it again.

The NHL is getting it wrong by not moving to Houston or KC who make more sense for a lot of reasons.

[Three Stars]

[Admin]

Howler pretty, pretty angry!

https://sportsmascots.fandom.com/wiki/H ... Avalanche)

[DelPen]

A few more names have popped up but my favorite so far is Utah Outlaws.

[penny lane]

The players land in Salt Lake.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/ut ... fullscreen

https://theathletic.com/5433847/2024/04 ... a-coyotes/

Sorry for Arizona. Despite the quotes, I don't believe the NHL will go back there soon.

[DelPen]

The players land in Salt Lake.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/ut ... fullscreen

https://theathletic.com/5433847/2024/04 ... a-coyotes/

Sorry for Arizona. Despite the quotes, I don't believe the NHL will go back there soon.

I don’t see a suitable arena being built. The land auction isn’t even a guarantee to be won as far as I know and even then I don’t see their plan even beginning within 5 years let alone being completed.