Per Friedman: Coyotes players told team moving to Utah starting next season (Mod warning post #50)

[Whoot Whoot]

Also can someone explain like i am five how we got here - what a mess.

 

[FMichael]

Well there are fans of other franchises that didn't get the preferential "we're gonna save this franchise come hell or high water" a decade plus on life support that the Coyotes got from the league. This whole ordeal began to rub people the wrong way with how long it carried on



Seriously? This is really bush league...players, other team employees have families...they would need to make plans about their own situations and futures. This is something you should tell them once it becomes official. People need to find places to live etc and should be given as much notice as possible before they make decisions/commitments in AZ that would be difficult to back out of

‘Bush League’ and Arizona Coyotes unfortunately goes hand in hand.

 

[serp]

Par for the course for this ownership group. They didn't pay hotel fees for the Yotes either until the NHL stepped in and forced them.

Bunch of snake oil salesmen and hucksters.

 

[Duke749]

And then Atlanta gets a team, and they relocate to Winnipeg...it's a vicious cycle

You just wanna see the world burn don’t you?

 

[Duke749]

They’re no better then ASG was when they forced the Thrashers move. This shit is sick and f***ed up from a sports perspective.

 

[Grub]

Correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't Salt Lake City only have a population of 204,657 people?

Would need 10% of the population to fill a 20,000 arena each game.

 

[Megustaelhockey]

Correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't Salt Lake City only have a population of 204,657 people?

Would need 10% of the population to fill a 20,000 arena each game.

2.8 million people live in the combined statistical area.

 

[serp]

Correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't Salt Lake City only have a population of 204,657 people?

Would need 10% of the population to fill a 20,000 arena each game.

SLC Metro area has ~2.7 million which is about 82% of Utahs population

 

[barkovcanfinnish]

Really sad to hear this.

 

[biturbo19]

I'm confused. If the Yotes do relocate to Utah, are they taking their history or 'leaving' it in AZ?

They took all the records and history when they moved from Winnipeg. Why would they not carry it with them to Utah?

I mean...i'd be all for some weird swapping around where the Jets get back some of their history that was lost after the move, before they got the new team.

Transfer the records from the Thrashers to Salt Lake City. Or something. But whatever. It's all completely jacked up at this point anyway.

Gotta love 9 pages of shitting on the Coyotes and Quebec City talk. Never change HF. Only positive thing about losing the team is that I won't have to deal with any more of you jerks!

To be fair though...are comments like this not just kind of reinforcing the negative stereotypes about the Coyotes/hockey in Arizona though?

Like..."if we don't have a team we don't care"? Basically...is hockey really that important if ya'll gonna quit the thing entirely just because a team moved? Do Arizona fans care about "hockey" or do they care about "having a team"?


I mean, i get the frustration and emotional involvement. But they could move my favourite team and i wouldn't just "quit the NHL" entirely. I'd probably be angry and find a new team. But to just give up on the NHL and hockey altogether? Really just raises the question of how much it ever really mattered in the first place. Which is the whole stereotype around Arizona in the first place...

 

[Megustaelhockey]

Really sad to hear this.

It is very sad and a bad day for the sport.

I'm embarrassed for anyone who celebrates this.

 

[Saitama]

Just found out about the Coyotes moving. Sorry ARI fans, that sucks.

 

[FMichael]

It is very sad and a bad day for the sport.

I'm embarrassed for anyone who celebrates this.

Why should anyone feel bad that the team is on the verge of relocation to what is arguably a better market with a better group of owner/s and a legit NHL caliber arena that will likely see filled at or near capacity?

Let’s not pretend that this hasn’t been an ongoing issue for the better portion of 20 years.

 

[Megustaelhockey]

Why should anyone feel bad that the team is on the verge of relocation to what is arguably a better market with a better group of owner/s and a legit NHL caliber arena that will likely see filled at or near capacity?

Let’s not pretend that this hasn’t been an ongoing issue for the better portion of 20 years.

Let's take your team away and see how much you enjoy it. Think of others.

 

[FMichael]

Let's take your team away and see how much you enjoy it. Think of others.

I live in the greater Milwaukee area - so we don’t have an NHL team.

 

[Bob and 200 others]

I'm sorry, but what? Those are cities that are close to each other. A 3 hour drive from one large city to another isn't much at all. It's a day trip for a lot of people. My sister regularly drives from Charlotte to Raleigh and back in a single day for work. Not as a commute. She just has business in Raleigh once every couple of weeks.

I don't know how it is in Utah, they effectively have only one major city, but no one (or very few) in Tampa/Orlando are regularly taking the trip to see a sports team in the other city. There's much more to do and their metro populations are practically as big as the entire state of Utah. No need to draw from other cities.

Utah is one of the fastest growing states in America. People and businesses are flocking there.

Sure but Utah is tiny, how many people are actually moving there? Not as a percentage but total?

 

[wunderpanda]

Also can someone explain like i am five how we got here - what a mess.

the owner of the utah jazz offered a billion dollars to the nhl for a team, salt lake city is willing to raise 900million in new taxes for a new arena and has bid on a future winter olympics.

the nhlpa started complaining about mullet arena being embarrassing for the league and players.

tempe voters chose a toxic waste dump that bursts into flames instead of the coyotes building a new arena with no tax dollars, and there is doubt the coyotes current owner will actually win a land auction and build an arena in phoenix

the mayor of scottsdale, literally across the street from the site, is already complaining about traffic, lost retail revenue & random utility concerns that were already addressed in the auction price but ignored to rile up someone.

 

[ItWasJustified]

Sure but Utah is tiny, how many people are actually moving there? Not as a percentage but total?

Why does it matter? You would move a team to São Paulo just because there's 25 million people living there, would you? You either move a team where there are lots of hockey fans or you move a team where there's a solid plan to create lots of hockey fans.

 

[Hodge]

Quebec City is a cultural capital of the world compared to literally any American city.

Good for them. They're still not a major U.S. media market with a metro area population of 5 million.

 

[Bob and 200 others]

Why does it matter?

Right back at you. SLC isn't getting a team because of it's population numbers but because it appears to have a plan in place (who knows if it'll work). Why bring up Utah's population growth, which is irrelevant and miniscule in absolute numbers?

 

[biturbo19]

Lol Winnipeg is actually colder and smaller in population than Quebec City (metro area). 839k for Quebec City and 834k for Winnipeg according to the 2021 census.

Also, the real Quebec City area has over a 1M population. It is just that metro areas are calculated differently in Canada than in the US.

The Quebec City area, consisting of the Capitale Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches census divisions had a population of 1,111,245. And that was in 2011, so it's probably more like 1.2M now.

Not saying here that Quebec is a more viable market than SLC or Houston, just establishing some facts.

There's a lot of really funky stuff that happens when you start comparing US Metro Areas vs Canadian cities for sure.

Canadian major cities tend to be more "dense" than a lot of major US cities. So the actual city itself is going to have far more people in it. Whereas in the US, a lot of cities are really just a hollow core around which everyone actually lives in like 50 different exurb communities. But the flip side of this, is that Canada tends to have "hubs" that are part of the realistic "market" for a lot more far ranging other cities and towns.

It's like...Edmonton is ~1M people. But by the time you start to add in all the surrounding communities that are ~20 minutes out, suddenly it's over 1.5M. Then you realize that in terms of "market" it also includes a bunch of other reasonably sized cities and basically the entire Northern half of the province of Alberta and large parts of Northern BC and even splits Saskatchewan and the Territories. Not densely populated...but still adds up.

American cities don't really have that, because most of them aren't nearly that remote. They're basically just a stitched together quilt of "Metro Areas" that have one end when it runs into the next one. Without huge gaps like in Canada.

SLC Metro area has ~2.7 million which is about 82% of Utahs population

Yeah. This is basically what it comes down to. The way things get drawn up, the vast majority of Utah's population is in Salt Lake City...or Ogden and Provo which are all sort of lumped in together...and then it's bolstered by a military base that has about the same number of members as the entire Canadian Forces. lol. Plus other military bases and intelligence installations.


In Quebec terms, it'd be like including Trois-Rivieres and Saguenay and probably Sherbrooke and fifty other little towns in between, into the "Quebec Metro Area" rather than just Levis and the actually connected bits. It's just different, because the city doesn't just endlessly sprawl directly into the next through a loose collection of suburbs the same way. And Bagotville has like fifty people instead of fifty thousand.

 

[93LEAFS]

Good for them. They're still not a major U.S. media market with a metro area population of 5 million.

I wouldn't call Phoenix a major media market. It's sizable, but that's reserved for regions like NYC, LA, DMV, Bay Area and Chicagoland. Then you got a next tier of like Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, South Florida, Houston and Dallas before you start talking about places like Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc.

 

[ItWasJustified]

They're still not a major U.S. media market

Because being that has made the Coyotes so successful, right?

with a metro area population of 5 million.

Cairo metro area population are over 4 times that. Mexico City too. What about Delhi? Good of you to name a bigger city than Quebec City, but as you can see, I can do that too. Do you want to name some other cities that are bigger to no point whatsoever?

 

[Hodge]

Because being that has made the Coyotes so successful, right?

Cairo metro area population are over 4 times that. Mexico City too. What about Delhi? Good of you to name a bigger city than Quebec City, but as you can see, I can do that too. Do you want to name some other cities that are bigger to no point whatsoever?

You seem to lack a fundamental understanding of what drives NHL decisions.

Phoenix is an important market to any U.S. TV/media rights deal which is one of the single biggest driver of league revenue. Putting a team in Quebec City or Hamilton does nothing for that.

 

[ItWasJustified]

Why bring up Utah's population growth, which is irrelevant and miniscule in absolute numbers?

I didn't? I think population only matters to a certain point for a NHL team to be successful.