In August of 2023, I published the following blurb on our blog page (Arizona Sports Teams) about our hockey team:
The Coyotes, our hockey team, is another story entirely. They are still looking for a stadium to call home after several tumultuous seasons in Glendale and then losing a referendum to build a new stadium in Tempe Az. Currently, they are playing in the ASU Mullet Arena which only seats about 5000 people. That’s really small for a professional hockey team which leads to more talk about relocating the team. A recent article I found in the Phoenix Business Journal confirmed that Coyotes owner had executed an agreement to purchase a parcel of land, 41 acres, in northwest Mesa. So, the prospect of the Coyotes remaining in the valley are good! The article further states that the target date for the new arena is the 2026-27 season. Stay tuned for more information – this is exciting!
Well, this story did not end well. On Wednesday April 25th, Utah officially welcomed its’ new hockey franchise. Arizona Coyotes are no more –☹ The team doesn’t have a name yet but as Wikipedia says:
“The Arizona Coyotes are an inactive professional ice hockey team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area, which competed in the National Hockey League as a member of the Central Division and the Pacific Division in the Western Conference, and the West Division. “
Hockey is one sport that I don’t follow closely, but this feels so sad and there are a lot of fans here in the area who are very upset – no one wants to lose a sports team. If it’s any comfort, the fans in Utah seem to have embraced them and the biggest win for the team is that they have a place to play.
Their time in the valley was filled with a lot of drama about where they would play and as I mentioned in the above article, the last 2 seasons were played in a college arena with only 5000 seats. They deserved better and hopefully Utah will offer that in the upcoming 2024-25 season.
The one bright spot is that, according to the reports, Phoenix will be offered an expansion team IF they can build an arena in the next 5 years. Actually, the timeline is shorter because there is a reactivation period that must be met by Dec 2027. The team ownership is looking at acquiring land in an auction this June so Phoenix hockey fans will need to wait to see if that is successful.
I’d love to see this all work out; these last few years have been incredibly difficult for this franchise and ownership doesn’t seem to have a lot of people believing in him. But you just never know and for the large metro area that Phoenix is, we deserve to have a major league hockey team. They shouldn’t be…
#Transplanted