The Arizona Coyotes were the team of the news cycle in recent weeks and for all the wrong reasons. After years of speculation for what the long-term solution would be for the team in the desert, the news broke that the team is moving to Utah after the 2023-24 season, which was confirmed when the players were informed about the relocation on Friday, April 12.
The relocation puts an end to a long, tiring, and messy saga that goes hand in hand with the team’s history in Phoenix. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman saw the Southwest region as the final frontier for the league and pushed to keep a team there but for now, that vision is going up in flames. For the Coyotes, this season is wrapping up in the worst way possible as they leave the city and the state of Arizona with a whimper. They are in seventh place in the Central Division and will miss the playoffs for the fourth season in a row (they’ve only made the playoffs once since 2012-13).
Plenty of fanbases have dealt with the heartbreak of relocation before. From the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants in Major League Baseball (MLB) moving to the West Coast in 1957 to the Quebec Nordiques moving to Colorado in 1995, a move always hurts the fans the most and leaves the team a mess. For all the relocation stories, the Coyotes situation best mirrors the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) in 1995, a team that always felt snakebitten where the fans already suffered enough only to have a dagger put into their fandom.
Related: Reasons for the Arizona Coyotes’ Relocation to Salt Lake City
The tough part for the Coyotes is that, for the first time in a while, they had hope both on and off the ice. The rebuild, which started in 2020-21, was starting to take shape and the arena issues looked like they were finally going to be resolved. Then Alex Meruelo and the rest of the ownership group pulled out the rug from beneath them, leaving the fans feeling betrayed and lied to.
Coyotes Offseason Indicated a Promising Season
The Coyotes tore the core down from 2020-21 until this offseason, trading away Conor Garland, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Jakob Chychrun. They also moved on from goaltenders Antti Raanta, Adin Hill, and Darcy Keumper who were all part of their roster in 2020-21 (ironically, Keumper and Hill were the starting goaltenders for the last two Stanley Cup winners). In the 2023 offseason, however, they started to build around a young core by signing Mathew Dumba and Sean Durzi to strengthen the defense while acquiring Connor Ingram, who has been a bright spot in the net all season.
The young core already had Clayton Keller, Matias Maccelli, and J.J. Moser emerging as building blocks, while the pipeline was projected to add even more talent to the roster. Logan Cooley started the season on the NHL team and looked like a star in the making, while Josh Doan, son of Shane Doan, was eventually going to be a key part of the offense (his debut was much-anticipated). The Coyotes weren’t expected to compete for the Cup or even with the top teams in their division, but this was supposed to be the season they would make a push for a wild card spot.
That’s what happened to start the season. The Coyotes were a tough team to play against and with a 19-16 record on New Year’s Day, they looked more than capable of contending for a playoff spot in the Western Conference. They were playing great in both ends of the ice, scoring 3.14 goals per game and allowing only 2.82 goals per game, and looked like a well-coached team with Andre Tourigny’s vision of the team starting to take shape.
The Browns Are Finally Ready to Contend
The Browns are associated with heartbreak and devastating losses. In the 1980s, the fanbase had to endure “Red Right 88” in 1981, “The Drive” in 1987, and “The Fumble” in 1988. In the 1990s, they finally looked like they were building something special and had a team in place that could reach the Super Bowl, something the franchise had never experienced.
It’s easy to forget how good things look for the Browns heading into the 1995 season. They went 11-5 the season before and lost in the Divisional Round with all the vital pieces returning for the next season. Bill Belichick was the head coach and starting to make his mark as one of the greatest of all time, notably with his schemes and preparation on the defensive side of the ball. Vinny Testaverde was their quarterback and the journeyman was entering the prime of his career and proved capable of leading a potent offense. Throw in a talented roster and a scouting department with an eye for finding starters (led by the recently retired Ozzie Newsome who went on to become one of the game’s best evaluators) and the Browns looked like a team ready to compete.
The Browns’ last championship came in 1964, before the Super Bowl era and they never reached the big game. Likewise, the Coyotes never played in a Stanley Cup Final. Considering the teams were both known for underachieving and disappointment heading into a season in a competitive state was a big deal.
Venue Issues Put Dark Cloud Over the Season
The Coyotes were promising on the ice, but they entered the season with plenty of drama off it. Many will backtrack to the 2023 offseason, but it’s important to go back further. The best time to understand when the drama was starting to unfold was Dec. 2021 when the public was beginning to see Meruelo as an owner who wasn’t in control of his team, and specifically, the arena situation.
Just as the new year was beginning, news broke that the Coyotes would be locked out of Gila River Arena, their home at the time, because of missed payments from Meruelo. The payments were made shortly thereafter and the team was fortunate to stay in the arena until the 2021-22 season ended. That brief story stuck with the city of Tempe, Arizona, and the citizens who were looking to fund a future home for the Coyotes.
Sports fans don’t think about the owners of the teams they root for. Citizens and politicians who put public money into a project do and they look for an owner with a plan. Meruelo didn’t have one. To further prove that point, the Coyotes moved from Gila River Arena into Mullet Arena, a college venue with a 5,000-seat capacity. A game or two in an arena that provides a college atmosphere is fun, but it’s far from a long-term solution.
After a season in the small arena, the city voted on an arena proposal. The plan, unlike previous developments, favored the city. Most of the money towards the arena would come from private funds and the project would not only build an arena but also an entertainment district and other benefits to the area. On top of that, the land the Coyotes planned to use for the development was in an area that was, for the most part, a landfill, and turning trash into treasure was on the table with this proposition. It was up to the citizens to vote for the approval.
The problem was twofold. The first was the estimates. Whenever an arena or stadium is built, the funding almost always exceeds the total that was proposed. While the plan hinted at a lot of private funding, the public would, as they historically do, have to pay more than they thought at first. The Oakland Athletics, who have an unreliable owner of their own in John Fisher, are experiencing this problem firsthand as they try to move to Las Vegas. The city was initially onboard, but as they look further into the costs and realize who they are dealing with from an ownership standpoint, they have become more skeptical and what looked like a done deal has become a coin flip. This led to the second problem with the arena plan. To make it work, the citizens needed confidence in Meruelo to get it done and they didn’t have it. In the 2023 offseason, there was no reason to have confidence in him after all.
The Coyotes weren’t spending on the team, they were parting with star players, and there was no vested interest in winning. Throw in the Gila River Arena lockout that was fresh on people’s minds and there was a belief that if any owner was going to fail, it was Meruelo. It resulted in a rejection of all three propositions, which cast doubt about the Coyotes’ future.
Cleveland didn’t have the same issues as much as they had a greedy owner who clashed with the city government. Art Modell, the owner of the Browns at the time, saw that the city was investing in the other sports teams and believed it was time for the football team to have the new state-of-the-art venue it deserved. The Guardians (called the Indians at the time) were granted a new ballpark in 1994, while the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Cavaliers had a new arena built the same year. The Browns, meanwhile, continued to play in Municipal Stadium, a multi-purpose stadium built in 1931 that was starting to fall apart.
Modell believed the city would give in to his demands considering the Browns and football go hand-in-hand with the city and the state of Ohio as a whole. If he wasn’t going to get what he wanted, he would leave and look for a city that was willing to put together the funds for an NFL team. The full story is best illustrated here as the drama unfolded for multiple months.
The Cleveland mayor and the city wanted to negotiate but Modell wasn’t interested. He found a city that was starved for football in Baltimore, a city that lost a team in the previous decade with the Colts moving to Indianapolis. When an owner or an ownership group is incompetent, deceitful, and at times both, the best bet on negotiations is that it will result in the team relocating and doing so in an ugly and messy fashion. Modell and Meruelo shared at least some (and some would argue all) of those traits, making the move an inevitability.
Ironically, the state of Utah, led by an eager owner in Ryan Smith, is excited to have a hockey team and is willing to put the money on the table to make the move happen.
Relocation Rumors Become the Dagger
The Coyotes had a strong start, yet it’s no coincidence the team started to fall apart once the rumors surrounding Utah started to pick up. It started in early January and picked up ahead of the trade deadline with the Utah group putting in a formal request for an NHL team. With no arena solution in sight, relocation started turning into a greater possibility, even if there wasn’t evidence to confirm it.
It’s hard to ignore the outside noise, as much as players like to say they can do so. Put yourself in a player’s shoes (or skates for that matter). Imagine showing up to practice, to games, to work in general, and not knowing if this is where you’ll be next season. Players with families have to figure out what’s next. Players who signed long-term contracts hoping to settle down in Pheonix, have to wonder about their future. It’s a part of life in the NHL, the uncertainty of the future, but relocation is something they have no control over (compared to on-ice effort and talent where a player lacking it can and will experience more movement). Even if the rumors aren’t true, as a lot of rumors tend to be, the fact that they are circulating makes them something to ponder.
They slowly started to slide to the bottom of the standings. They had the eighth-best record in the Western Conference on New Year’s Day. By the time the All-Star Break came around, they were 11th in the conference. Now, they are 13th in the conference with the second-worst record in the Central Division.
The Browns had a collapse that became far more catastrophic. On Nov. 6, Modell announced that he had an agreement in place to move the team to Baltimore. The Browns were 4-4 at the time. They finished the season 5-11. The ending was especially sad for the fans who were at the final home game, some of whom took pieces of the stadium with them as a way of remembering the team and an era.
The Coyotes’ season is all but over and the recent news only confirmed what many were thinking. It’s the end of an era and a brutal way for a team with so much promise to go out. Hockey has thrived in smaller markets and in both the southern and western regions of the United States, yet it wasn’t meant to be for Arizona, at least not to this point.
Cleveland Gets a Team in the End
The relocation was devastating for the city of Cleveland. This city watched Jim Brown make his mark as one of the greatest NFL players, Otto Graham win seven NFL titles in 10 years, and Paul Brown change the game from an innovation standpoint (Modell fired him in 1962, another sign of an incompetent owner). In 1999, when the league expanded, Cleveland ended up getting a team, and the Browns were born again.
For the Coyotes and their fanbase, it’s a sign of hope. Sure, the Browns have been one of the worst teams in the NFL since their rebirth in 1999 with multiple last-place finishes, including an 0-16 season in 2017, but the city ended up with a new team, a new owner, and a new stadium.
All those things are in store for the Coyotes down the road. The NHL will expand at some point. It’s a matter of when and not if as multiple cities are clamouring for a team. When the league does so, they will again consider Arizona and do so with a plan and a competent ownership group in place. Hockey won’t be in the desert next season but it could be in the future and will thrive with the right leadership.