Imagine imagine for just a second a multimillion
dollar professional sports franchise. OK. They
employ elite world class athletes. They have
these incredibly lucrative national television
deals. Right. And they possess a deeply dedicated
fan base. Right. The standard pro sports set
up. Exactly. But when the players step out onto
the ice for a home game they aren't skating out
into some massive state of the art sports palace.
No. They are stepping out into a 5 ,000 -seat
college arena. For all intents and purposes,
this major league, globally recognized team is
effectively homeless. It genuinely sounds like
the premise of a... like a goofy sports comedy
movie. It really does. But this wasn't fiction.
This was the incredible chaotic reality for the
Arizona Coyotes at the end of their nearly three
decade run in the desert. Welcome to this deep
dive. Today, we are looking through extensive
historical overviews of the Arizona Coyotes franchise,
pulling primarily from their documented history.
And it is quite a history. It is. Our mission
today is to unpack how a professional hockey
team survives almost 30 years of bankruptcy courts.
bizarre arena configurations, and endless ownership
drama before suddenly vanishing into the Utah
mountains. And, as we'll find out, why their
story might not actually be over. Right. So whether
you are a diehard sports fan or just someone
who is fascinated by the messy intersection of
big business, urban planning, and civic identity,
this deep dive is your ultimate shortcut to understanding
one of the wildest sagas in sports history. To
truly understand how they ended up in a tiny
college arena, we really have to set the stage
by looking at where they started. Yeah, take
us back. The year is 1996, and the National Hockey
League is facing a massive logistical challenge.
They are executing the Winnipeg Jets' relocation.
Okay, let's untag this. Because to grasp the
identity of the Coyotes, you really have to understand
why the Jets had to leave Canada in the first
place. What was driving that NHL relocation?
It all came down to the shifting economics of
professional sports in the 1990s. The original
Jets had incredible success in the 1970s playing
in the World Hockey Association. That was the
rival league that eventually merged into the
NHL. Right, exactly. But by the mid -90s, the
financial landscape of hockey had completely
transformed. The league did not have a salary
cap back then. Oh, wow. Yeah, which meant player
salaries were untethered and just skyrocketing.
So the cost of running a team was just exploding
year over year. Exponentially. And to bridge
that massive financial gap, teams... absolutely
had to have modern luxury suites to generate
corporate revenue. Which Winnipeg didn't have.
Right. Winnipeg was playing in an aging 15 ,400
seat arena that had virtually zero premium seating.
Without that luxury suite revenue, the business
model simply collapsed. Even with a packed house
every night. Yeah. Despite having an incredibly
passionate fan support system, the owners were
bleeding money and simply had to sell the team
to buyers who could provide a modern infrastructure.
So they pack up the moving trucks, head south.
And we witnessed the birth of hockey in the desert.
A completely non -traditional, sun -drenched
market. Now, they arrive in Phoenix with this
immediate, heavy pressure to succeed. I have
to imagine the team itself struggled out of the
gate, trying to build a fan base from scratch,
while dealing with the culture shock of moving
from Manitoba to Arizona. Actually, that's the
surprising part of the story. On the ice, they
were instantly competitive. Really? Yeah, the
transition didn't seem to faze the players at
all. They brought in a dynamic trio of offensive
powerhouses. You had Jeremy Roenick, Keith Tkach,
and Rick Tachet. That's a serious lineup. It
was. Plus, they had a fan -favorite goaltender
in Nikolai Khabibulin, who the fans affectionately
dubbed the Bullen Wall. The Bullen Wall. That
is a phenomenal nickname. It really is. And that
core group produced results. They posted six
consecutive seasons playing .500 -0 -0 hockey
or better. Meaning they were... They were winning
at least half their games or earning half the
available standings points. Exactly, which made
them a consistent playoff threat in their early
years in Arizona. But off the ice, the situation
was completely different. The sources detail
their very first home, America West Arena in
downtown Phoenix, and the setup sounds like an
absolute disaster for a hockey team. It was a
beautiful building, but it suffered from one
massive, unfixable flaw. It was designed exclusively
for the NBA's Phoenix Suns. And a professional
basketball court is significantly smaller than
a 200 -foot NHL hockey rink. I'm trying to picture
how you even force a full -sized hockey rink
into a space that was fundamentally poured and
built for basketball. You practically have to
cram it in. When they tried to fit the boards
and the ice into America West Arena, they had
to hastily re -engineer the entire floor plan.
Which didn't go well. Not at all. The configuration
was so fundamentally poorly suited for hockey
that a large portion of the upper deck actually
hung over the ice surface. Wait, literally over
the ice? Literally over the ice. I'm trying to
picture... Paying NHL prices for a ticket, looking
down and literally not being able to see the
goal your team is defending. It's almost comical.
If you were sitting in those sections, almost
a third of the rink and an entire goal was completely
obstructed from your view. You would have to
look up at the jumbotron just to see if a puck
went in the net right beneath you. Exactly. Because
of this, they had to cut the listed capacity
down to just over 16 ,000 seats, making it the
second smallest arena in the league at the time.
They had to do that just so they weren't selling
thousands of tickets to people staring at a concrete
overhang. So right from day one, their main source
of revenue is handicapped. This raises an important
question for you, the listener, to consider from
a business perspective. What happens when your
physical foundation is literally hiding the product
from the consumer? It's doomed from the start.
It's a classic case of trying to force a product
into an incompatible infrastructure and set off
a chain reaction of financial losses that the
franchise would spend decades trying to recover
from. Which brings us to the wild ownership carousel
of the 2000s. And you cannot talk about this
era without bringing up the great one. Oh, yeah.
Wayne Gretzky. In 2005, Wayne Gretzky, universally
considered the greatest player in the history
of the sport, becomes a part owner of the team.
Right. And then he steps behind the bench and
names himself head coach. What was the strategy
there? Was he just trying to inject some star
power into a struggling market? It was a massive
marketing play. Having Wayne Gretzky as the face
of your franchise brings immediate national television
coverage and buzz. Sure, he gets eyes on the
product. But the issue was Gretzky had zero coaching
experience at any level of hockey. The hype was
massive, but the on -ice product began to suffer,
and behind the scenes, the finances were bleeding
out at an alarming rate. Let's talk about those
numbers, because the financial situation during
this era is staggering. What's fascinating here
is the sheer scale of the financial ruin taking
place while the media spotlight was focused on
Gretzky's coaching. They were losing money fast.
Very fast. By this point, the team had moved
out of downtown Phoenix to a new building in
the suburb of Glendale. This is what we came
to know as Gila River Arena. Okay, so they finally
had... have a proper hockey arena. Yes, but they
were trapped in highly unfavorable leases and
dealing with plummeting attendance. During this
era, the Coyotes were reportedly losing as much
as $40 million in a single year. $40 million.
A year. Every single year. That is unsustainable
for any business, let alone a new sports team
in a non -traditional market. And all of that
financial pressure eventually boils over into
the chaotic bankruptcy of 2009. It did. The owner
at the time, Jerry Moyes, had essentially thrown
his hands up, right? He had. Things were so dire
that Moyes had secretly handed operational control
of the team over to the NHL just to keep the
payroll moving. Wow. But then Moyes pulls an
astonishing, almost unbelievable maneuver. Walk
us through what happened. So the NHL, led by
Commissioner Gary Bettman, was working on finding
a new, stable buyer. They had Jerry Reinsdorf
lined up to make an offer. He's the one who owns
the Chicago Bulls and White Sox, right? Exactly.
So hours before Bettman was supposed to present
Moyes with Reinsdorf's offer, Moyes suddenly
throws the team into bankruptcy court entirely
on his own. Wait, he just bypassed the league
entirely. How did he think the NHL was going
to react to him trying to sell the team out from
under them? He was desperate. He was betting
that the bankruptcy court would prioritize his
massive financial losses over the NHL's internal
constitution. What was his endgame? Moyes wanted
to bypass the league's relocation rules and sell
the team to a Canadian billionaire named Jim
Balsillie. Balsillie was the co -CEO of the company
that made BlackBerry smartphones. Oh, right.
And Balsillie's explicit stated plan was to buy
the team out of bankruptcy and immediately pack
them up and move them to Hamilton, Ontario. But
the NHL wasn't just going to let a rogue owner
dictate the location of one of their franchises
through a legal loophole. Not a chance. The league
fought back fiercely in court and ultimately
the bankruptcy judge sided with the NHL. So you
can't just ignore the league rules. Right. The
judge ruled that you cannot use bankruptcy to
circumvent a sports league's established relocation.
rules. The judge voided the sale to Ball Silly,
leaving the team in total limbo. Who actually
owns the team at this point? That resulted in
the NHL itself stepping in. They bought the Coyotes
and assumed all of their debts just to keep them
in Arizona and prevent the franchise from folding
entirely. Unbelievable. For the next several
years, the franchise was effectively a ward of
the league. It became this exhausting parade
of failed potential buyers. Like who? You had
Jerry Reinsdorf's group again. investment firm
called Ice Edge, a Chicago businessman named
Matt Holsizer, former San Jose Sharks owner Greg
Jamison. And none of them worked out. None of
these complex deals could quite cross the finish
line. The only thing keeping the arena lights
on was a very tense reliance on millions of dollars
in taxpayer subsidies from the city of Glendale.
So the team is living paycheck to paycheck on
city subsidies owned by the league and constantly
rumored to be moving to Seattle or Quebec or
Hamilton. A total circus. You would think the
players on the ice would be completely distracted.
But this is where the story gets incredibly ironic.
During this absolute peak period of ownership
chaos, the Coyotes managed to put together their
best run in franchise history. It is one of the
great paradoxes of this entire saga. Under head
coach Dave Tippett, the team completely insulated
themselves from the boardroom drama. They just
played hockey. And played it well. In the 2011
-2012 season, they rallied. They won their first
and only division title. They marched all the
way to the Western Conference Finals. I remember
that. They beat heavyweights like the Chicago
Blackhawks and the Nashville Predators before
finally falling to the eventual Stanley Cup champion
Los Angeles Kings. That playoff run felt like
magic. It felt like they had finally cemented
their place in the desert and proved that hockey
could thrive there. It brought the community
together. And it seemed to help the business
side, too, because shortly after, in 2013, the
NHL finally found a stable buyer in a group called
Renaissance Sports and Entertainment. Yes, finally
some temporary stability. As part of that new
era, in 2014, they officially changed their name
from the Phoenix Coyotes to the Arizona Coyotes.
Why the rebrand? The logic there was twofold.
First, they wanted to reflect their actual physical
location, which was in the city of Glendale,
not Phoenix proper. OK, that makes sense. Second,
they wanted to market the team to the entire
state of Arizona, hoping to draw fans from Scottsdale,
Mesa and Tucson. broadening their revenue base
and we have to take a moment to mention the aesthetics
here yeah because during this era they eventually
brought back the beloved kachina logo oh it's
iconic for anyone who hasn't seen it it's this
incredibly unique retro southwest Native American
-style coyote wearing ice skates. It is universally
considered one of the coolest, most defining
jersey designs in all of professional sports.
It gave them a distinct, hyper -local, civic
identity that fans absolutely rallied around.
It's an essential piece of Arizona Coyote's history.
Absolutely. But if we connect this to the bigger
picture, a cool jersey and a statewide rebrand
cannot fix a fundamentally broken municipal relationship.
Ah, yes. The Glendale divorce. What exactly caused
it? caused the relationship between the city
and the team to fracture so permanently. It was
a bitter, protracted fight. In 2015, the Glendale
City Council voted to terminate a massive 15
-year, $225 million arena management agreement
they had with the team. On what grounds? The
city cited a conflict of interest, claiming that
former city employees were improperly involved
in negotiating and securing the deal for the
Coyotes. That is messy. Very. The two sides eventually
reached some short -term lease patches, but the
trust was entirely gone. And that leads to the
ultimate breaking point. Yes. In 2021, Glendale
drew a firm line in the sand. They completely
refused to renew the arena operating agreement,
effectively evicting the Arizona Coyotes from
Gila River Arena after the 2021 -2022 season.
So the city essentially changed the locks on
a major league sports franchise. Now it feels
like when the physical foundation of a team crumbles,
the front office loses its grip too. Did this
constant chaos bleed into their hockey operations
and decision making? A glaring example of this
organizational instability happened off the ice
during the 2020 NHL draft. Right. The team drafted
a player named Mitchell Miller. This immediately
sparked widespread public backlash because Miller
had a documented history of severe bullying.
He specifically targeted an African -American
classmate with a learning disability back in
high school. And the response from the team.
Following the intense public uproar, the team
swiftly renounced his draft rights. We aren't
digging into the broader societal debates here.
looking at the historical timeline. And this
incident is heavily cited as indicative of a
front office that was in constant turbulence.
Making rapid decisions under pressure. Exactly.
Poorly vetted decisions during an era of extreme
stress. They were a franchise that simply could
not find stability, not in the boardroom, not
in the draft, and certainly not in their physical
arena. Which leads to the most surreal chapter
of their history. Here's where it gets really
interesting. Right. Because they are evicted
from Glendale. They have no NHL caliber arena
to play in. So for the 2022 -2023 season, they
are forced to move into Mullet Arena. Right.
Mullet Arena is located on the campus of Arizona
State University in Tempe. It was built specifically
for college hockey. And what was the capacity
of this college venue? It held between 4 ,600
and 5 ,000 people. That is tiny. To put that
in perspective for you, a standard NHL arena
holds roughly 18 ,000 people. The Coyotes were
playing in a venue that was a fraction of the
size of the next smallest building in the entire
league. How does the NHL justify putting generational
superstars, guys like Sidney Crosby or Connor
McDavid, into a college rink where the locker
rooms and facilities are completely scaled down?
The NHL only allowed it because it was presented
to them as a temporary Band -Aid. The Coyotes'
ownership group had proposed... a massive $2
.1 billion privately funded arena and entertainment
district in the neighboring city of Tempe. So
they were selling a vision of the future. Yes.
This project was supposed to be the ultimate
permanent savior for hockey in the desert. The
league was willing to endure the embarrassment
of the 5 ,000 -site arena for a few years if
it meant a billion -dollar palace was waiting
at the end of the tunnel. But then came May 2023.
The Tempe Arena proposal wasn't just a boardroom
decision. It had to go to a public vote by the
city's residents. And the voters soundly rejected
it. Why? If it was privately funded. Concerns
over traffic, noise, and the allocation of public
resources, even for a privately funded arena,
there are infrastructure costs swayed the electorate.
The no vote won out. That has to be a devastating,
almost fatal blow for a front office that had
banked their entire future on that one plot of
land. What was the fallout? It was the absolute
turning point. The team scrambled desperately.
They looked at sites in nearby Mesa. They looked
at tracts of land in North Phoenix. But everywhere
they turned, they faced immediate municipal opposition,
infrastructure issues, or massive zoning delays.
The walls were closing in. They were running
out of time, and the NHL's patience had finally
expired. Why? The league was growing increasingly
uncomfortable having a flagship franchise playing
in a 5 ,000 -seat college arena with no concrete
exit strategy. Which brings the hammer down in
April 2024. essentially steps in and brokers
a complex, highly unusual $1 .2 billion transaction.
Walk us through how you even sell a team under
these circumstances. The NHL essentially brokered
a deal to split the franchise in half. The actual
hockey assets, meaning all the players on the
roster, the coaching staff, the scouting department,
and the future draft picks were sold to Ryan
Smith. He's the billionaire owner of the NBA's
Utah Jazz. Exactly. Those assets were immediately
moved to Salt Lake City to become a brand new
expansion franchise, which has since been named
the Utah Mammoth. Leaving the Arizona Coyotes
as a team that exists entirely on paper. Right.
But before the players packed their bags for
Utah, there was one final game at Mullet Arena
on April 17th, 2024. And the details from the
source material about this night are just incredibly
profound. It was a very emotional night. They
played the Edmondson Oilers and won 5 -2. The
5 ,000 fans in attendance organized a massive
whiteout in the stands. Which is a beautiful
nod to their history. The whiteout is a legendary
fan tradition they actually carried over from
their Winnipeg days, where every single fan in
the building wears white, creating this blinding,
unified wall of noise and support. They chanted,
we love you, Coyotes, all night long. And there
was this incredible moment for Shane Doan. Ah,
yes. Doan was the ultimate franchise loyalist.
He was drafted by the original Jets, moved with
the team to Phoenix, and played his entire two
-decade career with the franchise. Apparently,
his officially retired jersey banner had been
lost during the chaotic eviction and move to
Mullet Arena. Which tells you a lot about how
rushed that move was. Completely. But a local
fan had discovered it, and Doan actually received
his lost banner back during that final emotional
game. And after the final buzzer sounded, the
players didn't retreat to the locker room. They
stayed out on the ice for over an hour. An hour.
Yeah. They were taking off their game -worn jerseys,
handing out their sticks and equipment right
over the glass to the 5 ,000 fans who had stuck
with them through decades of turmoil, right to
the bitter end. It was a profound release of
30 years of frustration and love. Just a surreal,
heartbreaking way for an era to end. But the
named Coyotes didn't go to Utah with the players.
No, it didn't. The owner at the time, Alex Murelo,
retained the Coyotes name, their logos, including
that iconic Kachina design and all of the franchise's
historical records. So he kept the brand. He
did. The NHL gave him a very specific five year
window. The deal was if Murelo could successfully
build a state of the art arena within five years,
the NHL would reactivate the Coyotes as a new
expansion team. So after the tears of the final
game, there was a glimmer of hope. Morello still
had a path forward for Phoenix sports arenas.
Briefly, Morello banked everything on winning
a land auction for a 110 -acre parcel of state
-owned land in North Phoenix. He needed that
specific land to build the arena. Okay, so it
all comes down to an auction. But in June 2024,
the Arizona State Land Department suddenly canceled
the auction, citing the need for more special
use permits and infrastructure planning. Oh,
wow. So the rug gets pulled out from under them
one last time. Without that land, Marolo realized
he had no viable, realistic path to build an
arena within the league's time frame. So shortly
after the auction was canceled, he completely
relinquished his rights to the franchise back
to the NHL, walking away from the team entirely.
It felt like the absolute final nail in the coffin.
But as we look toward the future, the historical
sources note that the story might not be totally
over. That's right. In 2025, an advisory panel
was formed with the explicit goal of bringing
an NHL expansion team back to the Phoenix area.
And the head of that committee, Andreda Doan,
the wife of Coyotes legend Shane Doan. It shows
that the organic desire for professional hockey
in Phoenix hasn't evaporated, even if the physical
team did. So what does this all mean? We've covered
everything from the economics of the 1990s NHL
to Wayne Gretzky coaching to playing in front
of 5 ,000 fans in a college barn. What is the
ultimate takeaway for you, the listener, from
this massive timeline? The Coyote Saga is a masterclass
in the intersection of sports, municipal politics
and real estate. We tend to think of pro sports
franchises as these untouchable money printing
machines that operate above normal business rules.
Why? They seem invincible. But this story proves
that even in the incredibly lucrative world of
major league sports. If you have a bad physical
location like an arena with obstructed views
or a stadium placed too far from your core demographic
and you lack a stable, trusting partnership with
your local municipality, it can absolutely sink
a multimillion dollar asset. You simply cannot
force a physical infrastructure that doesn't
work. Exactly. It's a massive cautionary tale
about the harsh realities of the business of
sports. It is. And it leaves us with one final
provocative question to ponder. If the NHL does
eventually grant an expansion team to that 2025
revival committee? Will a new franchise be able
to shed the heavy baggage of three decades of
instability? Or does the ghost of the coyote's
chaotic past permanently haunt the ice and the
desert? That is a fascinating thought to leave
on. Can a market truly get a clean slate? Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive
into the wild, unpredictable history of the Arizona
coyotes. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and
as always, stay curious.