With the Coyotes gone, what will it take for the NHL to bring hockey back to Arizona?
The “Party Barn” was packed with Arizona Coyotes fans wearing white; ironic, since the game was a funeral for the franchise that’s called the desert home for nearly 30 years.
There were no official announcements during the game Wednesday night to confirm or even acknowledge what the NHL made official the next day, that the Coyotes will move to Utah before next season starts.
Neither team owner Alex Meruelo nor team president Xavier Gutierrez were at ASU’s Mullett Arena to see the fans say goodbye, but it's entirely possible that the 5-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers was the last professional hockey match in Arizona.
One fan held up a sign, hoping for a miracle: “This is ridiculous, Shane Doan, please save us.”
It’s not gonna happen -- not right now, anyway.
“It’s one of those things,” Doan said. “I love the Coyotes, and my family has been accepted so much in this Valley and been welcomed into this Valley like I couldn’t believe. We’ve been treated better than anyone deserves. And we’re so grateful for it.
“We would love to do whatever we can, but at the same time, this is what it is. ... We’ll see what happens. Nobody knows what happens in the future, so tonight’s just a celebration of all the good things.”
There aren’t many good things, right now. Not financially, anyway.
'We’re grieving a bit'
The Coyotes are scavenging.
At Mullett Arena, they don’t have much of a team shop or control over concessions, parking or anything else that teams normally have. Sure, they can sell tickets, but there are only 4,600 of those to go around.
The NHL doesn’t have the kind of national TV deal that can prop up a franchise in this condition, so Meruelo doesn’t have much choice.
The league’s TV contracts with Turner and ESPN are worth about $600 million annually. For the sake of comparison, the NFL’s collection of deals, with ABC, CBS, NBC, YouTube, and others is worth about $10 billion a year.
The fans in Tempe chanted, “Salt Lake sucks!” But there weren’t enough of them shouting for it to matter.
“We’re grieving a bit,” Doan said. “It’s something that everyone cared about. And I think you have all kinds of emotions when something like this happens. … Hockey, it’s more than just a sport. It’s the relationships. It’s the fans. It’s the people that worked here for their whole careers. It’s the security people. It’s the ticket people. It’s everybody.
“It’s a small tight-knit group here, so that makes it tough. It is what it is.”
Then again, maybe losing the team could be the best thing that ever happened to the fanbase.
Maybe this will galvanize support for a permanent home for a nomadic franchise that’s been roaming the Valley for years, from downtown Phoenix to Glendale to Tempe, with plenty of rumored stops in between.
The NHL on Thursday set out the conditions that need to be met to revive the Coyotes in the desert: Meruelo has five years to build "a new, state-of-the-art facility appropriate for an NHL team."
If it’s going to work, the Coyotes’ ownership group can’t be greedy.
A full-on entertainment district, with shops and bars and restaurants and luxury apartments isn’t going to work here, not with NHL hockey as the lone focal point.
Voters already shot it down in Tempe, and elected officials aren’t excited about it in Phoenix or Scottsdale.
Looking ahead: What the Arizona Coyotes need to do for the 2024-25 NHL season
'I’m always the eternal optimist'
The reality is that there’s just too much competition.
The Suns. The Cardinals. The Diamondbacks. Arizona State sports. A NASCAR track. The Phoenix Open. Spring training. The Fiesta Bowl. Super Bowls. Final Fours.
It makes more sense for the Coyotes to try to form a partnership, to join an existing pack, rather than roam around like a lone wolf.
Consider the other cities that have all four major men’s pro sports: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, L.A., Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philly, San Francisco and DC.
In just about all of these cities, the NBA and NHL teams share an arena, either that or the hockey club plays an hour or so from the city.
So, to bring the NHL back, perhaps it makes sense to see about connecting with Arizona State on a new arena in Tempe? (Desert Financial Arena could use an upgrade. Why not use this as an opportunity to start over?)
With the right plan, an ASU-NHL connection could turn into a massive athletics complex, something that could host Olympic sports and training facilities and whatever businesses would cater to fans, athletes, coaches and trainers.
Fan pressure online, in letter writing campaigns, calls to talk radio shows and everything else can help make any hope into a reality. If hockey fans are out there, this is the time for them to crash the net.
The possibilities here would be nearly limitless, which is a good way to characterize the mindset of Captain Coyote on whether he thinks his former club will return.
“I’m always the eternal optimist,” Doan said. “I’m gonna assume that it’s going to come back. I’m viewing this as a chapter that’s closing, but it’s not the end of the book. It’s just a chapter that’s closing.”
Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @SayingMoore.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Will the Coyotes come back to Arizona? Shane Doan is optimistic
