There are three notable dates surounding the impending move of the Arizona Coyotes to Utah, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, with the first coming a year ago in May.
“The Coyotes were, for all intents and purposes, on the clock, after they lost the Tempe vote for the new arena in May of 2023,” Friedman said on Monday’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast. “Everybody kind of recognized that if they didn’t have something sorted out this year, this hockey year, they were going to move.
“I had people who told me on the weekend that the NHL never looked at this Coyotes ownership the same way after they lost the Tempe vote. because they kept on selling it as, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna win, we’re gonna win,” and they lost it. They got hammered. And it was always different after that.”
The next important date in the Coyotes’ saga came during the fall, when the NHL Players’ Association conducted tours to meet with its membership.
The No. 1 issue for the players’ union at the time was international hockey, something that has now been addressed with the planned Four Nations tournament next winter and the impending return to the Olympics in 2026. But the second most important issue for the players — and especially their agents — was the status of the Coyotes, because it was deemed to be hurting the league.
During those tours, according to Friedman, the players were assured that if the Coyotes situation had not been sorted out by Jan. 1, they were going to be moved.
“That’s what players told me they were told,” Friedman said.
The final date (or straw) came a month ago, when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly met with Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo and club president Xavier Gutierrez. Having already failed to secure the land in Tempe for a new arena, the club was now moving forward with a plan to buy some 110 acres of property in Phoenix, near Scottsdale. Knowing that the auction for that property would not take place until the end of June did not fit with the NHL’s timeline.
“They just said in that meeting, ‘It’s too long. It’s time. And we have to find an alternate plan,’ ” Friedman said. “They said, ‘You will be allowed to purse another team. You will be allowed to try and win the auction, but Coyotes 1.0 is over. And about two weeks ago, I think the people that really mattered knew that this was very real and that Salt Lake City was going to be the next home of the Coyotes, if they could get the deal done.”
It’s at that point that the machinations of the Coyotes-to-Salt Lake City move began to grind.
“I really think that the goal here of the NHL and Utah, and to some degree the Coyotes, was that nobody was going to talk until this was announced. And Gary Bettman and Alex Meruelo were going to sit at a table and explain,” Friedman said. “But they lost control of it. Too many people knew.”
While Meruelo will, reportedly, sell the hockey operations of his team to the NHL for $1 billion, who will then sell it to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith for $1.2 billion, he will still retain the Coyotes name, trademarks, and business operations. And he will have the opportunity to reactivate the franchise if he can get an arena built within five years, at a cost the same $1 billion.
Friedman cautions that there are still hurdles, including the status of the club’s AHL franchise in Tucson. Not to mention the approval of the NHL’s board of governors.
“I have heard … that a number of the governors are not that happy with this,” said Friedman. “They understand that Bettman had to make a deal. They had to get it done. But they think Meruelo is getting away too easy. First of all he’s being made whole, plus. And secondly they think he got too good a deal to come back.”