Per Friedman: Coyotes players told team moving to Utah starting next season (Mod warning post #50)

[Dr Pepper]

The NHL would never be so short-sighted as to announce something like this in the middle of their flagship product with millions of eyes focused on...

...oh. Yeah, okay. During the playoffs makes sense, actually.

Exactly.

Sounds like they want the deal finalized this week before playoffs start.

I assume the NHL doesn't want this overshadowing the playoffs and in a perfect world they probably never really wanted anything to be leaked until after the playoffs, but we are passed that now.

NHL wants Arizona Coyotes move to Salt Lake City settled before playoffs | TSN

The NHL wants to have the Arizona Coyotes relocation to Salt Lake City settled before the NHL playoffs begin this weekend, TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun reports.

www.tsn.ca

They also don't want to hold off until the land auction taking place in late June = which may or may not go in Meruelo's favour anyway. Worst case scenario would be yet another season at the embarrassing college arena, so I think the NHL's got everything in place to avoid this.

The sooner it's official, the better. Seems like the players are already well aware, anyway.

LeBlanc, Barraway, Meurelo. The 3 owners post Moyes after the bankruptcy. Coyotes never had a good owner which is absolutely correct.
But, then ask the question, why is that? Why did no one else view the Coyotes as a good investment over the past 15 years than these 3 parties?

These were the parties that the NHL entrusted the Coyotes to, to either make Glendale work or secure another arena.

It's 100% on the NHL. If you are not able to find a good owner, you either keep holding onto the team until you do, and if you can't, they should have been moved earlier.

Yup. They even stepped in and took over ownership of the flailing Coyotes for a couple seasons, when it seemed no one else wanted to.

Sucks for the fans that the franchise just couldn't get out of its' own way and find stability for once.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Literally nothing makes sense about having more east coast teams play at 10:00 and west coast teams play at 4…

It’s bad enough the NHL insists that roughly 20% of a teams games are played at a really inconvenient time already…

The bolded part happens in MLB and everyone figures out how to deal with it. And the 2nd bolded part already happens in the NHL and everyone figures out how to deal with it.

And I'm not interested in having a discussion on how scheduling will work - there's 1,234 people already eager enough to offer 5,678 ideas on that - but I'm not envisioning 21+ games where East Coast teams play at 10pm local time and 21+ games where West Coast teams play at 4pm local time.

 

[ToDavid]

For my money I would tie the name/branding to an Olympic theme. The Olympics is a big part of the city’s sporting history, and tying the team into the hype for the likely upcoming winter games in SLC (and potentially more in the future) could be a boon.

 

[kvladimir]

This is why my longstanding idea to scatter all the teams across all the divisions, so that every division spans coast-to-coast, makes sense. We don't have this ongoing debate about teams being lopsided across time zones, don't have to debate whether someone has to be added in the East to balance someone being in the West, don't have to worry about moving someone from the Eastern Time Zone west / Central Time Zone east but other CTZ teams get stuck in the West, ... scatter them, you get none of that.

Most teams get a rival, you pair them up and they stay in the same division. You otherwise, make it so there's roughly the same number of teams East vs. West in a division. Then, if someone gets moved, no big deal - no one has to change divisions. Or, you make a swap(s) to re-balance travel for the respective divisions.

Yes, I know why it won't happen, but it would avoid so many complaints that have long existed and avoid a ton of these concerns re: expansion and relocation and where teams go.

Oh, my, no...

So, make everything bad, instead of the smallest possible amount bad?

As a hockey nerd, though, I would love to see some alignment proposals for this. Here's mine:

Conference 1:

Division A: VAN, SEA, CHI, STL, DET, MTL, BOS, FLA
Division B: CGY, EDM, WPG, MIN, TOR, BUF, OTT, TBL

Conference 2:

Division C: LAK, ANA, SJS, NSH, CBJ, WSH, PIT, PHI
Division D: VGK, UTH, COL, DAL, CAR, NYI, NYR, NJD

Finally, perfection at last!

 

[Tawnos]

The bolded part happens in MLB and everyone figures out how to deal with it. And the 2nd bolded part already happens in the NHL and everyone figures out how to deal with it.

And I'm not interested in having a discussion on how scheduling will work - there's 1,234 people already eager enough to offer 5,678 ideas on that - but I'm not envisioning 21+ games where East Coast teams play at 10pm local time and 21+ games where West Coast teams play at 4pm local time.

There are 1,234 people who have ideas, but you're probably the only one interested in having all divisions run coast-to-coast. Maybe there are one or two more out there.

Because it's a terrible idea.

 

[kvladimir]

All the name ideas..

Utah Yeti
Utah Raptors
Utah Swarm
Utah Wasps
Utah Stingers
Utah What I Tah?
Utah Vultures
Utah Ice-o-topes

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, Utah has some tangential Wild West history (wasn't me who did the research), which suggests these could also be options:

Utah Outlaws
Utah Renegades
Utah Bandits
Utah Rebels (my suggestion)

 

[StreetHawk]

Yup. They even stepped in and took over ownership of the flailing Coyotes for a couple seasons, when it seemed no one else wanted to.

Sucks for the fans that the franchise just couldn't get out of its' own way and find stability for once.

AZ was an uphill climb from day 1 when they arrived in 1996. Footprint was opened 4 years earlier BB specific. NHL knew they needed their owner to contribute funds if they were to get a NHL approproiate arena. Never got an owner who could make that happen in their ideal location.

A lot has to line up right when the NBA/NHL teams are owned by different entities, when it comes to arenas. Bulls/Hawks in Chi, Mavs/Stars in Dal, based on their agreements with the old Chicago Stadium and Reunion Arena, sharing a new arena made sense for them. Phi/Bos, the NHL team owns the arena and the NBA is a tenant. LA Kings own the arena and a minority stake in the Lakers.

Need the NBA team owner to buy the NHL team if the NBA team controls the arena revenues, like they do in AZ, Houston, Portland, and I assume Smith in Utah does as well.

 

[GrumpyKoala]

Utah Fried Chicken.

But they could keep the Coyotes name. Utah is riddled with an increasing Coyotes overpopulation.

 

[Faceboner]

Utah wet mouths

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, Utah has some tangential Wild West history (wasn't me who did the research), which suggests these could also be options:

Utah Outlaws
Utah Renegades
Utah Bandits
Utah Rebels (my suggestion)

Gotta pick a name to make it a sick jersey

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Oh, my, no...

So, make everything bad, instead of the smallest possible amount bad?

I never said it was "good for everyone." I've never claimed that.

I have claimed - and will happily point out - that "everyone gets screwed." But, everyone gets pretty uniformly screwed, instead of "the East gets cushy bus rides and short plane trips in the same time zone for 50 games, the West has to take flights over the other 2/3rds of North America for intra-conference games and then do 32 games in a 4th time zone with more, possibly longer, flights" which has been a longtime complaint going back to at least the 90s.

And, it deals with the problem I note below.

There are 1,234 people who have ideas, but you're probably the only one interested in having all divisions run coast-to-coast. Maybe there are one or two more out there.

Because it's a terrible idea.

Every time someone says we can't relocate ___ to _____, or if we expand to ____ then there has to be a team in _________ or we can't do anything, it comes down to a singular problem: geography. Nothing can get done, or things can only get done if other things happens, without paying full respect to where teams are located so that there's a "clear" delineation of East vs. West, and it snarls a lot of possible solutions.

My idea makes geography practically irrelevant as a factor. It's "terrible" because it's non-traditional in that respect, but once you get past that it makes expansion and relocation a whole lot easier. Add/move teams where you want, either you need no tweak or you tweak two divisions to rebalance where teams are distributed.

And it's not like the league never had this. The '78-79 to 80-81 seasons had an Adams Division with Minnesota lumped in with Boston, Buffalo and Toronto and a Norris Division with Montreal, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Los Angeles. That Norris Division grouping dated back to '74-75, and before Minnesota shifted into the Adams it was California which then became Cleveland.

 

[Rob Brown]

Sad for the fans but overall glad this is finally coming to an end.

I do think it's complete bs that he's making like a 300% return on his initial investment despite being such an objectively terrible owner. It was interesting to hear on 32T that there are other owners unhappy with the deal he got and that they may vote against him getting another expansion team down the line, although I find it unlikely he'd get his shit together anyway. I could see him just disappearing after he gets his $1B.

 

[Tawnos]

I never said it was "good for everyone." I've never claimed that.

I have claimed - and will happily point out - that "everyone gets screwed." But, everyone gets pretty uniformly screwed, instead of "the East gets cushy bus rides and short plane trips in the same time zone for 50 games, the West has to take flights over the other 2/3rds of North America for intra-conference games and then do 32 games in a 4th time zone with more, possibly longer, flights" which has been a longtime complaint going back to at least the 90s.

And, it deals with the problem I note below.


Every time someone says we can't relocate ___ to _____, or if we expand to ____ then there has to be a team in _________ or we can't do anything, it comes down to a singular problem: geography. Nothing can get done, or things can only get done if other things happens, without paying full respect to where teams are located so that there's a "clear" delineation of East vs. West, and it snarls a lot of possible solutions.

My idea makes geography practically irrelevant as a factor. It's "terrible" because it's non-traditional in that respect, but once you get past that it makes expansion and relocation a whole lot easier. Add/move teams where you want, either you need no tweak or you tweak two divisions to rebalance where teams are distributed.

And it's not like the league never had this. The '78-79 to 80-81 seasons had an Adams Division with Minnesota lumped in with Boston, Buffalo and Toronto and a Norris Division with Montreal, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Los Angeles. That Norris Division grouping dated back to '74-75, and before Minnesota shifted into the Adams it was California which then became Cleveland.

Yeah, they've had this... and it sucked.

Expansion and relocation are rare events. There is no good reason to make them the motivating factor behind scheduling. It's a terrible idea because it's bad for everyone in every situation EXCEPT when discussing expansion or relocation. It's just not a common enough issue to incorporate it into decision making on this topic.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Yeah, they've had this... and it sucked.

Expansion and relocation are rare events. There is no good reason to make them the motivating factor behind scheduling. It's a terrible idea because it's bad for everyone in every situation EXCEPT when discussing expansion or relocation. It's just not a common enough issue to incorporate it into decision making on this topic.

But again ... it's uniformly bad.

And to repeat what I've said every time I've mentioned this idea: I know the owners will never go for it. However, if we're trying to solve the problem of doing relocation / expansion and geography getting in the way, the only way you're going to do that is to get rid of geography as a consideration - and the only way to do that is to redraw divisions so that they span all time zones and you don't end up with a scenario where one division is Toronto/Buffalo/Pittsburgh and everything north and east from there, while another division goes Tampa/Florida to Seattle/Vancouver.

 

[KeydGV21]

The bolded part happens in MLB and everyone figures out how to deal with it. And the 2nd bolded part already happens in the NHL and everyone figures out how to deal with it.

And I'm not interested in having a discussion on how scheduling will work - there's 1,234 people already eager enough to offer 5,678 ideas on that - but I'm not envisioning 21+ games where East Coast teams play at 10pm local time and 21+ games where West Coast teams play at 4pm local time.

If MLB jumped off a bridge would you want the NHL to?

And yeah, I deal with it by ignoring almost 20% of my teams games…a marketing move I would expect from Gary…

 

[StreetHawk]

Sad for the fans but overall glad this is finally coming to an end.

I do think it's complete bs that he's making like a 300% return on his initial investment despite being such an objectively terrible owner. It was interesting to hear on 32T that there are other owners unhappy with the deal he got and that they may vote against him getting another expansion team down the line, although I find it unlikely he'd get his shit together anyway. I could see him just disappearing after he gets his $1B.

Always be careful with these behind the scenes numbers. Who knows exactly what happened or what is the final amount of real money being transferred and how much debt the team has racked up over time. Probably an NDA is going to be signed to keep all of the details locked down.

NHL wants to keep valuations up, at least on par with the sales of Nash, Pitt, Ott, TB over the past few years.

Over 25 of the owners were around when he got the team (less SEA, and the 3/4 of recent sales as TB owners are still the majority ones). So, it's on them to have approved him when they did a few years ago.

 

[Tawnos]

But again ... it's uniformly bad.

And to repeat what I've said every time I've mentioned this idea: I know the owners will never go for it. However, if we're trying to solve the problem of doing relocation / expansion and geography getting in the way, the only way you're going to do that is to get rid of geography as a consideration - and the only way to do that is to redraw divisions so that they span all time zones and you don't end up with a scenario where one division is Toronto/Buffalo/Pittsburgh and everything north and east from there, while another division goes Tampa/Florida to Seattle/Vancouver.

And again... your whole thing only matters if you're only concerned with expansion / relocation. The league has other, bigger concerns about more common situations (i.e. games and seasons) than expansion or relocation.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

And again... your whole thing only matters if you're only concerned with expansion / relocation. The league has other, bigger concerns about more common situations (i.e. games and seasons) than expansion or relocation.

Yes. I mean, I would think that's kind of obvious, but if you feel a need to explicitly say that, then sure.

 

[Tawnos]

Yes. I mean, I would think that's kind of obvious, but if you feel a need to explicitly say that, then sure.

It's weird to see you say that's obvious when it negates your whole idea, which you seem to think isn't a terrible one. It is a terrible one, and you basically just admitted that

 

[Llewzaher]

Utah wet mouths


Gotta pick a name to make it a sick jersey

I like the Utah Venom ... But unfortunately , I think they are going with the Utah Yeti. Everywhere I look , even years back they have a fascination with the Yeti ..

If I was a betting man , it will be the Yeti. I just hope the Jersey scheme is sick and unlike anything in the league.

This is not made by me , but I like this color combo , not the logo or lettering

 

[StreetHawk]

I like the Utah Venom ... But unfortunately , I think they are going with the Utah Yeti. Everywhere I look , even years back they have a fascination with the Yeti ..

If I was a betting man , it will be the Yeti. I just hope the Jersey scheme is sick and unlike anything in the league.

This is not made by me , but I like this color combo , not the logo or lettering

View attachment 852144

A little too close to the Milwaukee bucks logo.

 

[CornKicker]

I like the Utah Venom ... But unfortunately , I think they are going with the Utah Yeti. Everywhere I look , even years back they have a fascination with the Yeti ..

If I was a betting man , it will be the Yeti. I just hope the Jersey scheme is sick and unlike anything in the league.

This is not made by me , but I like this color combo , not the logo or lettering

View attachment 852144

the part with Kraken and yeti names is they are never going to be deemed offensive to anyone in the future which i assume in these days that is part of the thought process

 

[Osakahaus]

Sad for the fans but overall glad this is finally coming to an end.

I do think it's complete bs that he's making like a 300% return on his initial investment despite being such an objectively terrible owner. It was interesting to hear on 32T that there are other owners unhappy with the deal he got and that they may vote against him getting another expansion team down the line, although I find it unlikely he'd get his shit together anyway. I could see him just disappearing after he gets his $1B.

Its absolutely awful how Meruelo will end up winning.

 

[eojsmada]

This is why my longstanding idea to scatter all the teams across all the divisions, so that every division spans coast-to-coast, makes sense. We don't have this ongoing debate about teams being lopsided across time zones, don't have to debate whether someone has to be added in the East to balance someone being in the West, don't have to worry about moving someone from the Eastern Time Zone west / Central Time Zone east but other CTZ teams get stuck in the West, ... scatter them, you get none of that.

Most teams get a rival, you pair them up and they stay in the same division. You otherwise, make it so there's roughly the same number of teams East vs. West in a division. Then, if someone gets moved, no big deal - no one has to change divisions. Or, you make a swap(s) to re-balance travel for the respective divisions.

Yes, I know why it won't happen, but it would avoid so many complaints that have long existed and avoid a ton of these concerns re: expansion and relocation and where teams go.

Agree. Travel money would go through the roof, and you might have to start thinking about extra days of rest for travel and such, impacting the schedule, but even reducing the season by 4-6 games would help alleviate this. The only other way to fix a larger NHL would be to make like 6 divisions of 6 teams, but then you would have to rejig the way the playoffs work to account for a more competitive division with a winner that has less points being like the 3 seed and a non competitive division with a winner who gets a ton of points being the 1 seed and the playoff brackets being a total waste of time.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

LeBlanc, Barraway, Meurelo. The 3 owners post Moyes after the bankruptcy. Coyotes never had a good owner which is absolutely correct.
But, then ask the question, why is that? Why did no one else view the Coyotes as a good investment over the past 15 years than these 3 parties?

These were the parties that the NHL entrusted the Coyotes to, to either make Glendale work or secure another arena.

It's 100% on the NHL. If you are not able to find a good owner, you either keep holding onto the team until you do, and if you can't, they should have been moved earlier.

It's just the reality of sports business.

Footprint wasn't built with NHL in mind, thanks to Zeigler advising Coangelo that the NHL wasn't planning on going to AZ. Coyotes chose to go to Glendale which wasn't where their fanbase was. Now, the metro PHX area has 2 18K indoor arenas. When the Suns lease with Footprint was close to being up, the Suns wanted no part of sharing a new arena with the Coyotes. They were not going to go from almost all revenue from Footprint to 50% of the revenue from a new arena. And Sarver neither had the desire nor the funds to purchase the Coyotes. Thus, Footprint gets a reno and remain BB specific.

Amen and amen. The problem with Phoenix has been finding an owner with deep pockets who really wanted a NHL franchise, as opposed to opportunists picking up the team from the bargain table. IMHO, Meruelo will not be able to make it work within five years and then some investor group with deep pockets will arise to do an expansion team in Phoenix properly.

 

[EpochLink]

The Utah Rebels, that's actually not a bad idea of a name.