I am going off memory here, but I don't think the problem is Arizona per se, but where in Arizona the team is. The problem is the team is far away from well anything. It is a growing area for hockey as you just need to look at players like Matthews and (I can't remember the others, but Spittin Chickets has brought them up) their youth hockey is doing well.
Really would we expect the Britich Columbia Canucks to draw a tone of people if they were playing in Abbotsford?
Honestly the Jets should never have moved there. The suns arena opened in 1992 as a basketball specific arena because colangelo, suns owner in the 80’s asked the NHL if they would ever come to Phoenix and was told not in his lifetime.
That basically ensured that the coyotes would never be successful there.
They took the Glendale deal and it hasn’t worked out for them. Blame the recession or whatever. They rolled the dice there and lost.
Everything about sports is about the arena. Who controls the arena matters as well as it’s configuration. Barclays is basketball only. Key was renovated to be basketball only.
I mean if Key Arena was actually knocked down and built back up as basketball only like Barclays, then there would not have been an nhl team awarded to Seattle. It would be the same age as Rogers arena give a year. Sonics would not have left and whoever the sonics owner would be would control the arena. Doubt they would give up control to OVG so that they could do an $800 million or whatever remodel to convert it to accommodate hockey. Even if the sonics owner wanted a hockey team would the revenue from hockey offset the revenue he would lose to hand control over the arena to OVG.
I personally would play the situation the same way as fertitita is doing. He controls the Toyota Center and is in the 5th largest us market. Try to get the price at what you want. Not desperate for a team like Seattle who needed a tenant before the city would let them renovate.