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

[dukeofjive]

Not sure if this is true, but sounds like the coyotes owner is about to make bank from selling th team he made a joke of.

f*** Betman and the nhl

 

[stator]

Gambling ads are illegal in Utah.

Sounds like Utah can be a safe space for Evander?

Joking aside, I believe the last straw is not getting enough city/state support for a new arena. That's got to be paramount for the owners group, and bettieman.

 

[golgoXIII]

i'm not a geographic and tourist specialist but is ther other big citys near salt lake city ??? cause
200 000 citizens seems realy small for a NHL franchise ???

 

[VivaLasVegas]

Winnipeg has the richest financial backing in the NHL, they should be OK.

It seems to this Americano that nearly all the posts dissing Winnipeg in one way or another all seem to come from Canadians.

 

[majormajor]

It applies to Quebec and any other small or midsize regional city. The Green Bay model only works for sports where games are rare special events, which is really just football.

Quebec City isn't getting an NHL team. It's just not big enough. Get over it.

Nearly the exact same population as Winnipeg.

Bettman and the NHL are not interested in Quebec for a bigger set of reasons, not just population.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

i'm not a geographic and tourist specialist but is ther other big citys near salt lake city ??? cause
200 000 citizens seems realy small for a NHL franchise ???

That's just the core city itself, the SLC metro area is about 1.25 million. If you toss in nearby Provo and Ogden then it goes over 3 million.

 

[SjMilhouse]

That's just the core city itself, the SLC metro area is about 1.25 million. If you toss in nearby Provo and Ogden then it goes over 3 million.

This needs to be pinned at this point

 

[tomd]

Arizona went all in on the Bedard tank and lost. That and the arena situation doomed them. They needed to be competitive on the ice in order to overcome all the other issues...and they weren't.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

Nearly the exact same population as Winnipeg.

Bettman and the NHL are not interested in Quebec for a bigger set of reasons, not just population.

Who EXACTLY in QC is offering the NHL a check for $1B?

Every year same junk, "Oh, please oh please give QC a team!" But then when one inquires who is willing to pony up the $1B expansion fee for QC, crickets.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

It sounds like Utah isn't buying the Coyotes but instead just buying up their player contracts. The Coyotes will be "inactive"

So does that mean that Utah is an expansion franchise? So would the new Coyotes have to re-enter as an expansion franchise? Do they both have to pay the franchise fee? My interpretation is that Utah would pay but the new Phoenix Coyotes would not.

Change "Utah" to Winnipeg and "Phoenix" to "Atlanta" and see how that went down. It will very likely work the same way here, with a nuance that the team changes owners in a 2-step process.


And then we're asking why it's a 2-step process, but I suspect that has something to do with money Meruelo may owe the league and the league guaranteeing it gets its money, and/or some requirement that Meruelo can't sell the team to someone intending to relocate it, he has to sell it to the league first. But, I also suspect the reasons why it's a 2-step process at some point in the not-too-distant future.

 

[stator]

NHL in bed with a scumbag owner...again.

Bettieman will get into bed with any wealthy owner. When I was young and started dating, I thought it would be cool to see her parent's tax returns. Bettieman actually does that.

 

[Il Stugotz]

NO RIDING BIKES WITHOUT HANDS

Hockey players don’t do dumb stuff like this.

 

[Alicat]

i'm not a geographic and tourist specialist but is ther other big citys near salt lake city ??? cause
200 000 citizens seems realy small for a NHL franchise ???

Park City, Provo and Ogden are all roughly 45 minutes from SLC and Vegas is about 5.5 hours. On top of that, you draw in fans from southern Idaho and southern Wyoming.

 

[Heldig]

Arizona went all in on the Bedard tank and lost. That and the arena situation doomed them. They needed to be competitive on the ice in order to overcome all the other issues...and they weren't.

They also missed out on McDavid and Matthews, either of which might have meant the team is still in Phoenix next year.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Who EXACTLY in QC is offering the NHL a check for $1B?

Every year same junk, "Oh, please oh please give QC a team!" But then when one inquires who is willing to pony up the $1B expansion fee for QC, crickets.

It's not just "someone has to write the NHL a check for $1 billion." It's "someone has to write the check for $1 billion, and have sufficient assets beyond that which are available and not encumbered / illiquid to cover possible operating losses for some period of time without running into personal financial difficulties that impact team operations."

And that $1 billion probably needs to be available immediately, or pretty immediately. The league isn't doing a 5-year, 10-year, 30-year installment plan for interested buyers.

 

[Primary Assist]

After the rookie season for Shane Doan with the Winnipeg Jets they moved to Arizona


After the rookie season for Josh Doan the Arizona Coyotes the moved to Utah.

After the rookie season for X Æ A-12 Doan the Utah Stormin' Mormons will move to Planet Omicron Persei 8

 

[StreetHawk]

Bettieman will get into bed with any wealthy owner. When I was young and started dating, I thought it would be cool to see her parent's tax returns. Bettieman actually does that.

NHL needed a good owner (from a non ice POV) for AZ the past 15 years after Moyes declared bankruptcy. NHL never found one. So, they only have themselves to blame as they approved the past 3/4 owners.

As for the players, it's a shock, but honestly, it's been 4 years that the team's long term fate in AZ was in question. Ever since they went to a year to year lease at Glendale for like their final 2 seasons there plus the 2 years at Mullet and the players saw the Tempe vote end up with a No.

So, if during those 4 seasons a player signed away UFA years, well, that was their choice. Probably only Keller and maybe Schmaltz signed their current deals before the team went year to year with Glendale.
As for those in their RFA years, kind of the luck of the draw when it comes to the draft. Have to play out your RFA years and decide what you wish to do.

 

[serp]

They also missed out on McDavid and Matthews, either of which might have meant the team is still in Phoenix next year.

I think this is one of the pitfalls of a nuclear rebuild especially for a franchise like the Yotes without a strong enough fanbase to endure it when things go badly. I'm not sure Dallas could've survived a rebuild like that either. Hell thinking about it i don't think the Stars ever truely went through full on rebuild since moving to Dallas. They weren't allways a good team but also never a truely bad team. They just seemlessly went from different team core to different team without ever beeing truely bad.

 

[SEALBound]

Question is, why would anybody build an arena if they are not sure to get a franchise?
To end up like Quebec? And Quebec has the fortune that they use that place for a lot of other stuff and don't really have competitition in town for events.
In AZ you would have 2 other places that are competition for events. Glendale and Footrpint.
So why build something if you don't know for certain that you will use it.

It would be a huge gamble.

Fair. Course they have a team and are reluctant to build already.

I think part of the expansion deal would be predicated on the new arena already existing. There's a chicken and the egg deal there but I imagine the developers would have to blink first. A new arena in the Pheonix area is hardly a bad thing, especially as they drew it up in the plans.

 

[PaulD]

"Who oaaaawn da Chiefs"

 

[Shroud of Orrin]

This whole idea just rots my socks!

 

[Youngguns1380]

You can try to twist it all you want, but the reality is that Quebec City has the economy of a tiny city in the United States. That's why the NHL has no interest in going back to Quebec City.

Quebec City's has the same population and a smaller economy than Dayton, Ohio. I'd bet a majority of people on here have never even heard of Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton has the Bombers - ECHL

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

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.

Ya, I think if things had gone differently it coulda worked, but you lose faith, trust, interest- shit, I should call her.

Anyways, hearing it first from Freidman is just the final TJ bozo Oshie kick to the groin for Coyotes fans. What a mess of an organization.

 

[Voight]

It's wild it ever got to this point. Shoutout to Seravalli for breaking this whole thing open. He's taken a ton of shit for his reporting on this because some Coyotes fans are taking the idea of the team leaving so personal which I totally get but it's been really solid so far

I found it funny when they were calling him. hack and a guy with no sources. Look, hes president of the PWHA, not saying that means hes the top hockey journalist but you dont get picked for that job by being some random dude writing gossip articles.

 

[FerrisRox]

Last nail should have been years ago. I have zero faith in the idea that Gary will give up on that market.

They would be morons to give up on the market. It's way too large of a market to ignore, especially when they've spent decades building it as a hockey market.

They will give up on the Coyotes, but if and when the arena situation is resolved, the NHL will absolutely return to the Phoenix area, it would idiotic not too.