April 19th, 2024
Alex Rickman
On April 18th, the NHL confirmed that the Arizona Coyotes will be relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah ahead of the 2024-25 season. While the move itself came as no surprise, as news of this move had leaked over a week ahead of the league's announcement, some parts of the deal were surprising, to say the least. Among the surprises in the announcement was the fact that Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will have the chance to restart the franchise from scratch if he can get an arena built in Arizona in the next 5 years, including keeping the Coyotes branding.
This, in my opinion, was a mistake by the league and could lead to the same problems that have plagued the Arizona Coyotes for the majority of their existence befalling the second edition of their franchise, putting the league and fans in the Phoenix area in the same awkward position they have been in for some time. Let’s look into why the league may come to regret giving Meruelo the right to restart the franchise in 5 years, and what they could have done differently to create a better situation for themselves and Arizona fans.
Arizona as a hockey market
Firstly, I want to make one thing clear; I firmly believe that hockey can thrive in the state of Arizona, or any big enough market, if given the right circumstances to succeed. Arizona has emerged as one of the biggest minor hockey markets in the United States, and it’s showing in the NHL, with players like Tage Thompson, Matthew Knies, and Auston Matthews calling the Grand Canyon State home. Something has gone right in Arizona to create the conditions needed to make the state a hockey hotbed, so anyone claiming that hockey simply cannot work in Arizona is flat-out wrong.
This article will not argue that the NHL should never go back to Arizona. I believe the exact opposite, and that a return to Arizona would be a great decision for the league to make at some point down the road. However, I do strongly believe that the league are mishandling the return of the franchise. With that out of the way, let’s begin looking into why I think the Coyotes return may be doomed to fail.
Return timeline
My first issue with the league’s agreement with Meruelo is the timeline they have provided, as 5 years is not nearly enough time for one of the league’s most dysfunctional organizations to make a big enough turnaround to see a successful return to the state. In recent years, the Coyotes have been a hot mess of a franchise, getting evicted from their previous arena, being stripped of draft picks, and having to play in the embarrassingly small Mullett Arena, among countless other issues that have emerged with the franchise in the build-up to their sale. Is 5 years enough time to clean up all of these issues, all while still trying to secure land to get a new arena built?
The NHL needs to be more patient with their plan to return to Arizona. The appeal of getting a team back in one of the US’s fastest-growing hockey hotbeds and biggest TV markets is understandable, but ultimately, what the Arizona organization needs is time to fix their many issues before they return to running an NHL franchise. Is there a chance that they could have their problems solved and an NHL-calibre arena ready to go within 5 years? Of course. Is it wise to try to force a 5-year process rather than allowing adequate time to solve the litany of issues that have plagued this franchise for years now? I think not, and I think this could come back to bite the NHL and the reborn Arizona Coyotes.
Coyotes brand
The Coyotes' name and logo were not part of the team's sale and remain in the hands of Alex Meruelo, so should Arizona be awarded an expansion franchise, they would almost certainly once again be called the Coyotes and use the same logos and jerseys as before. While some may be happy to hear of this, I am not so sure that this is a wise idea. Could this be partially influenced by my unpopular opinion that the wildly popular Kachina jersey is the most overrated in the NHL and should be banished to the shadow realm never to be seen again? Perhaps, but I do believe that a hard reset rather than the rebirth of the same franchise as before may be for the best.
The Coyotes' name doesn’t exactly conjure images of success. For a franchise that has, for much of its existence, been one of the laughingstocks of the league, the opportunity to get a fresh start upon their return could prove to be valuable towards creating a better image of hockey in the desert for fans around the league. However, the league and the Meruelo seem hellbent on the name remaining the same. This is one of the less important factors as to why the return to Arizona may fail, but ultimately, it’s hard to see a world in which hockey in Arizona would not benefit from the team returning with a new identity.
Is Meruelo qualified?
Report after report has come out talking about the state of the Coyotes franchise under Meruelo, and none of these reports have painted a flattering picture of his ability as an owner. From reports that he turned down an offer from the city of Glendale to keep the Coyotes in Gila River Arena for 20 years to the franchise’s inability to secure land to build an arena at any point during his tenure as an owner to making his son the team’s social media manager, Alex Meruelo hardly strikes me as the most qualified owner in the NHL. So why has the league decided that he has to be the man to keep the Coyotes in Arizona?
To put it frankly, Alex Meruelo is not the man to save Arizona hockey, and he almost certainly won’t be able to fix the organizations many issues in 5 short years. If I were the NHL in this scenario, I would be insistent that a new owner take on the Coyotes and get an arena built before putting a team back in the state, but unfortunately, the same opinion does not appear to be shared by league officials. With more qualified ownership, hockey could thrive in Arizona, but without an owner who is willing to do things differently from how they’ve been done throughout the history of the Coyotes, it’s hard to imagine things going any differently than they have in recent years.
Overexpansion
Finally, bringing the Arizona Coyotes back so soon may set the NHL up for challenges rooted in overexpansion. Should Arizona get their team back in 5 years, the league will consist of 33 teams, which could easily force the league’s hand into expanding to 34 or even 36 franchises. Is the NHL ready for this, especially so soon after welcoming Vegas and Seattle to the league? The idea of eventually reaching this number of clubs is fine to me, but expansion needs to be a gradual process, and expanding too much too quickly could prove to be a problem for the league’s talent pool.
Multiple major cities are ready for NHL teams, with Atlanta, Houston, and Quebec City immediately coming to mind. In 20 or 30 years, I would love to see all of these cities and Arizona have thriving NHL teams. However, if Arizona were to get a team in 5 years, the league’s hand may be forced into awarding teams to some or all of these markets in the years following that expansion, potentially putting these teams into a tough situation and making for potential new issues if challenges emerge too quickly in these new markets. Expansion can be great for the league if done right, but if rushed, the league could create new problems for itself like the Coyotes have been in recent years, so rushing into adding new markets to the league could prove to be more of a problem than a solution to Arizona’s problems.
Ultimately, time will tell what happens next for hockey in the Grand Canyon State, but I am worried about what may happen in 5 years time if Alex Meruelo is granted the right to bring back the Arizona Coyotes. Fans of the Desert Dogs have been put in the worst position any sports fan can be put in, and I hope to one day see them get their team back, but the league must trade carefully in their efforts to bring back the Yotes. I hope to be proven wrong and see the Coyotes become one of the best-run franchises in the sport if and when they do return, but for now, I am far from convinced that Alex Meruelo is the man to save Arizona hockey.