The long-suffering Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City and gaining ambitious new ownership.
This is bad news for the Blues. As long as Alex Meruelo owned the Coyotes, they were going to remain a lower-tier NHL team.
The Desert Dogs have made the playoffs just once since 2012, back in the 2020 pandemic mess when they won their play-in series before losing in the first round.
Since the pandemic ended, they have been in a perpetual rebuild, ditching veteran players and adding more and more prospects and draft picks. Former Blues executive Bill Armstrong gained impressive draft capital and freed up massive salary cap space as the budget-minded Coyotes GM.
Billionaire Ryan Smith was hoping to get an expansion team for Salt Lake City, but commissioner Gary Bettman convinced him to take this route instead.
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The NHL will spend $1 billion to buy the Coyotes from the hapless Meruelo, who will be remembered as one of the very worst owners in the history of a league cursed with many terrible owners over the decades.
In turn, the NHL will sell the team to Smith at about a 20 percent mark-up, with its teams splitting the profits from the sale.
Smith gains a team loaded with young talent and blessed with expiring contracts that will afford him maximum flexibility. Managed correctly, this will be even better than an expansion scenario.
This team will start out with a nucleus that includes Our Town’s Clayton Keller plus Logan Cooley (third overall pick 2022) and Dylan Guenther (ninth overall pick 2021) at forward.
Building a playoff-caliber roster for 2024-25 will be quite doable, since most contenders will still be handcuffed by salary cap concerns. Salt Lake City can expect to strike big in free agency.
Expect the competitive depth of the Western Conference to become even stronger.
As part of this deal, Meruelo will be in line to get an expansion team in greater Phoenix on the odd chance that he can get a new arena built. Given his dreadful track record – getting evicted from Gila Rivera Arena in Glendale for nonpayment, failing to find a suitable new home, failing to get anywhere on building a new arena – fans in the Valley of the Sun shouldn’t hold their breath.
The NHL is glad to be rid of him. Meruelo was singlehandedly killing revenue by dooming his team to a 4,000-seat arena while failing to build his new arena.
The league is gaining an aggressive new owner with the resources to eventually build a new arena in Salt Lake City, a growth market that will keep the Western Conference properly aligned.
Here is what folks have been writing about this scenario:
Ray Ratto, The Defector: “The Arizona Coyotes aren't dead yet, but they're going into stasis, and will pop back out fresh, new and more exciting than ever, as soon as the Greater Phoenix citizens get the hockey itch again and provide an arena, retail outlets, free land and infrastructure, including water. In other words, the Arizona Coyotes are dead. After a years-long leadup, this isn't breaking news as much as informational erosion. Owner Alex Meruelo released a statement on Saturday promising a future statement on this cavalcade of civic failure, but there's no real need. We know the story. He bought this often-owned but minimally operated team in 2019 at a distressed price, did nothing with it while occasionally skipping a few bills, and is now reportedly selling it back to the NHL for a profit. He'll also retain the right to own the next team the NHL decides to put in Arizona, if he fulfills the mission of building a new arena. But why would he bother getting back into the game? Meruelo tripled his investment on this boondoggle, and got nothing out of it except a series of no arenas, a damaged reputation with voters, and a promise that if anyone ever wants to give this another try, they'll have to go through him. And that's the real takeaway here—I mean, other than Meruelo's. He bought the most-owned team in NHL history (including several years when the league owned the team itself), and will be selling it back for a reported $1 billion, which he can use to get a new team, pending a proper arena. Commissioner Gary Bettman, who wants to own the Coyotes again like he wants gangrene, will reportedly sell the team to Utah Jazz owner and acquisition freak Ryan Smith at a suitable markup (either $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion, depending on reports). Almost everyone gets what they want: Meruelo makes money on the deal, the NHL makes money on the deal, Smith gets a new toy, and the people of Phoenix get peace and quiet. Whether or not Phoenix is a hockey market, it clearly can't be Meruelo's market.â€
Chris Johnson, The Athletic: “Bettman has been a fierce proponent of maintaining a franchise in the fifth-largest metropolitan U.S. market, and with good reason. The minor hockey scene is thriving there — bringing Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies and Josh Doan, the son of Coyotes legend Shane Doan, to the NHL — and there’s reason to believe the team could become a significant revenue generator under the right circumstances. However, there was only so long the league could wait for those circumstances to materialize, especially after Tempe residents voted against a proposed entertainment and arena development put forth by the Coyotes in a referendum last May. That left Meruelo back at square one in his pursuit of an NHL-quality setup. It also pushed back the clock for how long the Coyotes would need to play out of Mullett Arena as a secondary tenant. The sale and relocation deal currently in the works represents the cleanest potential exit. While the NHL constitution includes language that allows the league to pursue ‘involuntary termination’ of a franchise, that would be a litigious road to go down. Instead, they’re endeavoring to have Meruelo willingly part with the organization’s assets by paying him a price that far exceeds his entrance point (roughly $300 million, according to Forbes) while leaving the door open for him to return to the club if he succeeds in getting an arena built.â€
Jeff Marek, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵnet: “Until we see the specifics of the NHL’s agreement with Alex Meruelo and his window of five years to bring hockey back to Arizona all we’ll have is questions about hockey returning to the desert. One that I was asked over the weekend is whether Meruelo has the right to assign to somebody else? Given what we’re learning about the soon-to-be former owner of the Coyotes he’s eroded a lot of trust many had in him. Does he have the desire, the ability, the money to get this project off the ground and bring it to a conclusion? And if not, does his agreement allow him to negotiate the rights away? That window he’s been given is incredibly valuable and if Meruelo is allowed to transfer it, this deal moves from a home run to a Barry Bonds moon shot.â€
Greg Wyshynski, : “An NHL source told ESPN that Smith's preference was to have an expansion team in Utah -- and along with it, the chance to build one through an expansion draft. His willingness to forgo that and accept a relocation was a key factor in the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake City. Beyond the building and the owner, the NHL believes it's a market with a ton of potential for hockey. It's a winter sports town, and one that's expected to host the 2034 Winter Olympics -- a bid that could produce a new arena for the Jazz and the new NHL team. Salt Lake City has also been experiencing an economic boom: a 2024 report by the Milken Institute ranked Salt Lake City fourth among 403 U.S. cities in growth of jobs, wages and high-tech industry. Like Arizona, having a team in Utah also fits nicely with the location of several other U.S.-based franchises in the Western Conference.”
Ryan Lambert, EP Rinkside: “The Coyotes of the last several years were built to be cost-effective first and foremost, and while it's fair to say they punched above their weight in the last two seasons, this isn't what you'd call a competitive team in their division. If Smith pays nine figures for the club, you can bet he'll want to be more like Vegas (aggressive and willing to spend) than Seattle (less aggressive, but still willing to spend). The good news is they'd have money and assets to spend. The Coyotes cap commitments for next season include a grand total of nine players on one-way contracts north of $1 million. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ would obviously keep up a few guys they are technically able to send down, like Logan Cooley, but just ballparking it a bit, it looks like they'd have about $48-50 million to spend before they re-sign any of their current players (which includes a handful of RFAs worth bringing back). So let's say they end up with $35 million to spend on a two or three forwards and just as many defensemen. They could really make something happen in terms of ‘being competitive’ if they targeted the right people. And you gotta say that with a Smith-owned team could probably be a little more confident about those kinda deals than with the current ownership.â€
MEGAPHONE
“It’s always better to win games at the end. You (could) just put your heads down and say, ’OK, we don’t want to play.’ We want to play and try and make some plays.â€
Wild forward Karill Kaprisov, on playing out the season with pride. Â