With the official announcement by the NHL and its Board of Governors, the Arizona Coyotes will be relocating to Utah, and begin play in Salt Lake City for the 2024-25 season.

Kind of.

The NHL can’t do things normally, and the Coyotes especially cannot. So when you put these two together, chaos ensues. 

The league blandly announced today via a press release that a franchise has been established in Utah, which has yet to be named, that will be owned by the Smith Entertainment Group, led by Ryan and Ashley Smith. 

However, the NHL has not used the word “relocation” despite this feeling exactly like a relocation. They also have not used the word “expansion,” a term that would indicate that a team in Utah has no prior history. 

Instead, the NHL particularly used the word “establishment,” and in that original release stated that a “reactivation” of the Arizona Coyotes may commence within the next five years, provided (former) Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo can finally build a viable NHL arena for a team in Arizona. 

That’s a lot of words and quotes, but here’s what it boils down to: this is an unprecedented action in NHL history. Per the way the league has set this whole thing up, the Coyotes, themselves, are not relocating. They are becoming dormant. 

Utah, meanwhile, is purchasing all of the existing player contracts, coaching crew, and hockey operations staff, which they will take and create a new team in Salt Lake City. 

By definition, Salt Lake City is not an expansion team, but because the Coyotes are also not officially relocating, the new Utah team will have a brand new history. 

The existing history of the Arizona Coyotes will remain in the desert, and upon a reactivation of the team (should Meruelo actually choose to get it done), the franchise in Arizona will pick up where they left off. 

That means that records from guys like Shane Doan, a Coyotes legend, will remain with a dormant franchise. Something else that remains with the dormant franchise? The old Winnipeg Jets records. 

This is where things get ultra confusing. 

When the Coyotes arrived in Arizona in 1996, they were the relocated team of the Winnipeg Jets. The original Jets, who came to the NHL via the collapsed World Hockey Association, had all of their franchise history and records leave with the team when they fled south. 

For a while, this was all fine, because the franchise had relocated and the Jets were no longer in existence. This became a big topic of conversation when Winnipeg got a team back, by way of the Atlanta Thrashers relocating to Winnipeg in 2011. 

With the Thrashers’ now being the second incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets, a debate sparked about the team’s new history. Jets fans of old had watched Teemu Selanne and Dale Hawerchuk dominate for years, and now, the “Jets” all-time leading scorer was Ilya Kovalchuk, who spent ten years wearing a Thrashers sweater, but never dawned a Jets logo. 

The debate became whether a city’s hockey history is/can be the same as a franchise’s hockey history. I personally am of the mind that they are not the same thing, and franchise records move when a team does.  

However, my own beliefs on the topic are not the point of this article, and yes, I know, my opinion is definitely in the minority. 

Now that the Coyotes are able to retain their history (and by extension, the original Jets’ history), the topic is back in the mainstream. What makes this relocation different? What makes the Coyotes allowed to be “dormant?” 

This is the first time that the NHL has left a market with an open, public intention to return in rather quick fashion. In a way, they were forced to.

Alex Meruelo was in a pretty precarious position. His asset in the Coyotes franchise was losing money, and the constant failures to find a permanent arena had led to the team being forced to bunk with the Sun Devils at Mullett Arena, on the campus of Arizona State University. 

When they moved into Mullett, which could only seat 4,600 for NHL hockey, far and away the lowest capacity in the league, the original plan was to be there for three years, while Meruelo could build an entertainment district and full-time arena in nearby Tempe. 

That hinged on a vote to approve three propositions by the citizens of Tempe. All three of them were rejected by the voters, and the failure to secure faith and funding from Tempe was the beginning of the end for the Coyotes in Arizona. 

The situation in Mullett was not sustainable, and even though the team’s agreement with Arizona State University carried options for a fourth and fifth year extension, an NHL team stuck in that arena for five years was impossible. 

But despite all of that, Meruelo was not forced to sell. The argument for him being a terrible owner is all there, but he had done nothing that would have forced him to sell his team. So, once the NHL finally got restless enough to look for other avenues, they had to make a deal with Meruelo. 

And what a sweet deal it was. For not being properly engaged or prepared for the Coyotes fanbase and community in Arizona, Meruelo is going to walk away with several hundred million dollars, and the promise to be able to bring back a team, as long as he reaches the provisions needed. 

The NHL, for their part, loves the Arizona market. If they didn’t, they would have pulled the trigger on a move like this a long time ago. But eventually enough was enough, and five (or more) years at Mullett Arena was not a viable option for this team. 

Meruelo agreed, as he said in his press statement. “I agree with Commissioner Gary Bettman and the National Hockey League, that it is simply unfair to continue to have our Players, coaches, hockey front office, and the NHL teams they compete against, spend several more years playing in an arena that is not suited for NHL hockey.” 

However, he was savvy enough to negotiate an exclusive window where he could bring a team back (not an expansion team, officially), and resume the activities of the Arizona Coyotes. He is retaining the naming rights, logos, and further branding. 

Whether Meruelo is the right man to captain an NHL return to the desert is a very fair question (and he probably isn’t, considering he’s the man who lost the team in the first place), it plays into a larger problem. 

These new Coyotes, if they do return, won’t be the Coyotes. They’ll be some new team, cosplaying as the Coyotes, building off of a franchise history that isn’t theirs, and probably belongs in either both Winnipeg and Salt Lake City, depending on who you ask. 

The players that the Coyotes’ fans watched and prayed would develop finally have, and they will all be successful somewhere else, while a new batch of players come and take their place. It would be nothing against the new team in Arizona, but they simply won’t be the Coyotes. 

The old ties between the team and the fanbase won’t be there anymore. Josh Doan is a perfect example. 

The son of Coyotes legend Shane Doan, Josh broke onto the NHL scene late in the year, and his NHL action this season was magical for Coyotes fans. But with the team moving, Josh Doan’s records as an “Arizona Coyote” will be this: 11 games, 4 goals and 5 assists. 

That’s it. For a guy who would have the ultimate ties to the community, his time as a Coyote is done, even if the team does return in a few years. 

These are the things that will damage the start of any new NHL team in Arizona, and things that will forever make team history iffy, for both Arizona and Salt Lake City. 

As for that future team in Arizona, all eyes will turn to the public land auction this summer. The Coyotes’ official Twitter/X account briefly posted a message saying “See you all on June 27th,” before it was deleted. 

June 27th is the date of said land auction, which could really be the defining date that proves whether Alex Meruelo has any serious intent to revive the Coyotes. If he shows up with his checkbook and wins the bid, maybe he is for real. If he blows it off, that’s a sign to Coyotes fans that he truly doesn’t care. And there’s a growing belief in Arizona that the latter situation will happen. 

“Dormancy” could wind up being doom for the Coyotes. 

(Featured photo Ross D. Franklin/AP)