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

[tucker3434]

I doubt we will ever see something like that ever again. GMs and teams learned from those two expansions. And they were done with outside conditions that allowed them to happen.
And if the team has to rebuild straight away than it will be a fail anyway.

Of course we also have to consider what second team the east would get if there is an expansion to 36 teams. Lets consider that houston and Atlanta come in. And Phoenix would be an option.
then they are 35 teams. But that would make the schedule bad. So they want another team in the east. Where? Quebec?

And all of this is only possible if there is an arena in AZ. And i doubt that.
While AM gets 1b. He can use that to finance part of his proposed district. but where does he get the rest of the money without a franchis? I doubt there will be many people willing to lend him money. Especially when all the infos come out about his ownership of the yotes, after they move.
Oh and he would have to pay the league 1b for the expansion team. Which means that he will most likely cancel the bid. Or the state will cancel it because they see whats going on.

Which means that there needs to be another person willing to A) build an arena B) have the money for an expansion and C) work with Ishbia on a combined arena and district.

I cannot see that happen. It is way more likely that this will be the end for NHL hockey in AZ for a long, long time. If not ever.

Vegas is an outlier, but Seattle should be a realistic target. It's smart to set expansion teams up to be bubble teams from the start, and the current expansion rules should allow that to happen.

It was only 2 years ago, hockey in Atlanta wasn't on the radar for pretty much anybody. Now we have at least 2 competing groups with arena plans. Time heals all wounds, and in a city the size of Phoenix, there will be people with money that want to give it a shot. Whether it's AM or someone else, somebody will be making a serious push for an arena and expansion team within the decade. The NHL clearly wants to make that market work.

 

[GeeoffBrown]

I think that maybe some people don't realize that in order for the Coyotes to move to Hamilton or Quebec City, there has to be a group that wants to put a team in those cities, able to do so for next season and willing to pay $1billion for the Coyotes

 

[hockey20000]

salt lake city will be having problems within 10-12 years.. should of been quebec with an arena already waiting. doesn't even kansas city also have a arena ready waiting?

 

[Albatros]

salt lake city will be having problems within 10-12 years.. should of been quebec with an arena already waiting. doesn't even kansas city also have a arena ready waiting?

Salt Lake City will have the Winter Olympics within 10 years, accompanied by massive downtown improvement projects that this team will now be a part of.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Extremely unfortunate situation for everyone employed by the yotes org, as well as their fan. But at the end of the day, this is long over due and needed. I think the NHL will come back to Phoenix in a few years once they figure out the arena situation and find a better owner. Meruelo is a grifter through and through. From his little time as owner there has been so many stories of this guy not keeping his word, trying to get out of paying expenses etc the list goes on.

Theyre playing in a college arena right now. Its embarrassing the state that franchise is in (the hockey side of things is actually hopeful). But it needed to be done. No professional org should be playing in a college arena for a year, let alone several years.

The problem here is it looks like Arizona is losing the team but they're not losing the owner along with it.

Hopefully the conditions make.jt so that he won't be interested but then that means you have to find another owner to invest before a team comes.

 

[lakeshirts37]

Sorry but it just makes no sense to me. Hamilton and Quebec City have been begging for a team for decades and Salt Lake City just rolls in and grabs a franchise? How on Earth does that even make financial sense for the league? How does a city of 200,000 people with no hockey background support an NHL team? Both Hamilton and Quebec City have populations in the 800,000 range with an obvious higher interest in hockey. What's Gary's play here? I'm confused.

Yes thats very clear. SLC is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, with a committed owner, the ability to get a new arena built, etc. It also has 2.5m people in the metro area. Hamilton and QC is literally never happening. Im not sure why this is so difficult to grasp. It’s pretty simple business.

 

[JianYang]

I think the nhl will be back in Arizona one day.

How things could have been different back when they were leaving phoenix for glendale. One of the partners wanted to build a rink in Scottsdale and bowed out of ownership when that didn't happen. In an alternate universe, if the team moved to Scottsdale instead of glendale, I think they had a much better shot of surviving.

 

[adsfan]

I’ve also been curious if Milwaukee could support an NHL club. The Admirals do pretty well attendance wise and Wisconsin college hockey is a big deal.

Theoretically, seems a like it would be a good fit.

The Bucks owners don't want a hockey team in Fiserv Forum. They will put up with a NHL preseason game and the Badgers holiday tournament with 4 teams.

On the corporate side, Miller Brewing is now Molson Coors with their HQ in Chicago. (Coors had 1 brewery and Miller had 6, so that was total BS!) M&I bank was bought out by BMO Harris, now BMO. The Brewers, Bucks and Packers occupy the sponsorship space in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. You also have Marquette and the Badgers, so there can't be many dollars remaining. FoxCònn employes 1300 people instead of the promised 13,000, so that was a miss for the metro area.

It would be Atlanta 2.0 repeating with a hostile arena and shaky ownership.

You are correct about the Admirals. They had a wild 5-4 SO win over Chicago last night in front of 6620 very loud fans with the worst pair of refs that I have seen this season, and it has been a bad year for on ice officials.

 

[lakeshirts37]

I doubt that. And if then it will be in 10-20 years from now.
And only if its a combination of the NBA and NHL team, but Ishbia is not interested in hockey.
In addition this is only possible with a new arena, which i doubt will be build. Footprint will someday be replaced but it will have to be done privately without any vote (which is fair, no money from taxpayers for billionairs and all that) or else it will fail.

Respectfully, You have no idea what youre talking about.

 

[chauron]

Is that the plan? Utah is just temporary? I'm not arguing that Phoenix can't support a team, I'm saying there's no chance SLC can support a team better than Hamilton or Quebec City. FYI, Hamilton is in the Golden Horseshoe. There's something like 10M people within an hour's drive or train ride +/-. Even Phoenix can't compare to that population base to draw on.



Just sayin' I love their logo.

I meant lack of team in Arizona is likely temporary, as next expansion team will now surely come from there and Atlanta.

 

[Roksta]

Do we know if they will keep the Coyotes name for next season?

 

[ItWasJustified]

Do we know if they will keep the Coyotes name for next season?

Why would they keep the Coyotes name for one season? No, they won't be named the Utah Coyotes.

 

[ItWasJustified]

I think that maybe some people don't realize that in order for the Coyotes to move to Hamilton or Quebec City, there has to be a group that wants to put a team in those cities, able to do so for next season and willing to pay $1billion for the Coyotes

salt lake city will be having problems within 10-12 years.. should of been quebec with an arena already waiting. doesn't even kansas city also have a arena ready waiting?

No Western Team Will Move To A Eastern Market And Vice Versa As Long As There Are An Equal Number Of Teams In Each Conference.

 

[Coaches Coroner]

Barring a massive economic pivot from our dear leaders Canada will be more likely to lose multiple franchises than gain any more.

we won't lose any franchises, other than maybe Winnipeg if it keeps shitting the bed, but that was a known risk factor from the start iirc. The dollar has been shit since our previous dear leader and I don't really expect that to change with our next either. I agree QC is a fantasy, and there aren't that many other new great markets for a team in Canada (Toronto 2/Hamilton always sounded like a pipe dream). Some disagree, but I do think at this point a lot of the proposed locations in Canada would be in areas where other teams already have most of the fans gobbled up. I think Utah will be fine, don't think it'll be any worse than AZ.


Anyway I see the rest of this thread has moved to shitting on Canada and blaming its media to cope....just kind of funny after all the hand wringing and mod warning about being nice to AZ fans.

 

[Legion34]

The SLC market is closer to 2.7 million, because it includes the Provo and Ogden metros. Similar situation with the Hurricanes where you can’t just look at Raleigh, you need to look at Raleigh-Durham. SLC is a similarly sized market to Nashville.

That 2.7 number comes from what the NHL defines as a team’s territory, which everything within 50 miles (~80 km) of the city limits. When you look at QC, it’s around 1.1 million and that would be the smallest in the league. The NHL has to be concerned about markets that small with what’s going on in Winnipeg right now.

Hamilton would have ~9 million in that same analysis. But not only does that include Toronto, it includes Buffalo too. I think a hockey team would work really well there, but that’s exactly why it would never happen. I don’t think you could pay the Leafs and Sabres enough to let a potentially successful team cannibalize their markets.

Thanks! That’s really informative.

Personally I think that they could have a team in the KW area which would cover Hamilton to London which would be over 1 million people.

I agree. Most are going to be leafs fans the wings covering Windsor to London.
Sabres Niagara
Sens/habs covering east.

They could support it. The gta is as big pop wise as most us states

 

[Boris Zubov]

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

 

[MessierII]

Do we know if they will keep the Coyotes name for next season?

Apparently they will change everything is what I read. New name new colours

 

[Cursed Lemon]

So is this the Thrashers 2.0 where the city (cities), effectively, just didn't want this team? It seems like they stymied every attempt to make this work.

 

[mrhockey193195]

But Brett didn’t play with them when they moved.

Shane moved from Winnipeg to Phoenix. Josh will have moved from Arizona to Salt Lake City.

Ahh if that’s the condition, we’re limited to franchises that have moved at least twice, right? Besides WPG/Phoenix/Utah, and KC/COL/NJ, are there any others?

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

They had a nice color pallet on the jerseys , aside from that not good

 

[BKarchitect]

GTA obviously can support another team, I think that’s much more a matter of what the Maple Leafs and NHL would want.

Back to the naming - I see almost everybody throwing around “Salt Lake” or “Salt Lake City” and while the S makes for more fun alliteration variants - I would bet the house that the club will be called “Utah”.

As described above, the SLC “market” can in theory be much closer to 3 million than the city or Salt Lake Valley itself which makes up only 1.3 million. The entire Wasatch front is built up and when you are a team in a lower population but singular market in a state, it always makes sense from a marketing standpoint to brand your team identity to get the broadest possible target audience.

Colorado. Minnesota. Arizona.

I’d be very surprised if they aren’t the Utah “…”.

 

[Tatanka]

SLC is a great place to visit if you ski, bike flyfish. Otherwise it is a hole. For transient athletes that will go someplace else,after,the season is over I guess it would work. I visit annually to ski Alta and Snowbird. Wouldn’t want to live there full time. Jmho.

 

[CBJx614]

I remember I went to a Silver Sticks tournament when it was hosted in Dayton when I was a teenager. The Air Force museum was excellent even 15 years ago, I figure it's even better now.

Don't forget about the hockey history of Dayton as well! They had both the Gems(IHL) and the Bombers (ECHL) !!

 

[Transplanted Caper]

I think that maybe some people don't realize that in order for the Coyotes to move to Hamilton or Quebec City, there has to be a group that wants to put a team in those cities, able to do so for next season and willing to pay $1billion for the Coyotes

Yep. In 2011, Gary didn't just cold-call Chipman on a random May day. They had been connected in the background for ages, the "Jets" were ready to go and had infrastructure ready to go for a quick spring-to-fall turnaround. Seems obvious the league has had similar relationship with Smith of late. The league doesn't have a similar relationship to anyone in Houston or KC or QC. It's not feasible for this to be a standing start transition.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

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.

Nobody in QC is offering the NHL a $1B check, or cheque.