After two seasons of uncertainty in location limbo, the Arizona Coyotes are officially relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah.
The NHL announced the move Thursday, following an emotional final game at Mullett Arena on Wednesday night.
The move, which has been an open secret for a week now, was officially approved by the NHL Board of Governors after a vote on Thursday afternoon.
The team will be purchased by Ryan and Ashley Smith in a deal valued at $1.2 billion that has been brokered by the league. The Smiths are owners of Smith Entertainment Group, whose portfolio includes the NBA’s Utah Jazz and MLS’s Real Salt Lake.
The Utah hockey team will share the Delta Center arena with the Jazz until a new rink is built. That project is in the early stages of development ahead of Salt Lake City likely hosting the 2034 Winter Olympics.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman has previously reported that the players were informed of the move ahead of a game against the Oilers in Edmonton last Friday. The Coyotes closed the season with wins in three of their final four games, including a 5-2 victory on home ice on Wednesday, as rumours of the move swirled.
The Coyotes have been in turmoil since the conclusion of the 2021-22 season, when the City of Glendale opted not to renew its contract with the team to play at Gila River Arena. Voters then rejected, in early 2023, a proposed entertainment district that would have included an arena in Tempe.
The Coyotes have been playing at Mullett Arena, a rink with a capacity of 4,600 for NHL games on the campus of Arizona State University, for the past two seasons.
Coyotes majority owner Alex Meruelo is said to have an exclusive window to bring an NHL expansion team back to Arizona if he can hit certain benchmarks related to building a new arena in the region.
Meruelo is expected to enter an auction for a piece of land in North Phoenix, on the border of Scottsdale, in order to privately develop and fund a new arena. That auction is scheduled for June 27 but Friedman reported that while the initial hope was to see how it will play out, the league and its other owners had two concerns: the possibility of losing the auction and that the timeline to develop and build the arena would keep the Coyotes in Mullett Arena for three more seasons.
Thus, negotiations with the Smiths began and the Coyotes are now heading to the mountains of Utah.
