NHL Approves Sale of Arizona Coyotes, Relocation to Salt Lake City

The National Hockey League has approved the sale of the Arizona Coyotes to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, as well as the relocation of the franchise to Salt Lake City starting with the 2024-2025 season, the league said Thursday afternoon.

Ryan and Ashley Smith of Smith Entertainment Group bought the team and its existing assets for $1.2 billion from Alex Meruelo. The sale was approved on Thursday at a virtual NHL Board of Governors meeting along with a plan that renders the Arizona Coyotes franchise inactive, with a right to reactivate if Meruelo has built a new facility appropriate within five years.

The new Utah franchise will play at Delta Center, home of the NBA’s Utah Jazz. Smith told ESPN the Delta Center will have 12,000 unobstructed seats for games next season and may play with a temporary name and logo for next season.

“We are also delighted to welcome Ashley and Ryan Smith to the NHL family and know they will be great stewards of the game in Utah,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement Thursday. “We thank them for working so collaboratively with the league to resolve a complex situation in this unprecedented and beneficial way.”

A bill was passed in the Utah state Senate to help fund an entertainment district downtown that would host both NBA and NHL teams. The market does have an ECHL franchise, the Utah Grizzlies, which play at the Maverik Center in West Valley City.

“We are honored to bring an NHL team to Utah and understand the responsibility we have as stewards of a new NHL franchise,” said Ryan and Ashley Smith. “This is a transformative day for our state and our fans. Our intention had always been to pursue an expansion team. Commissioner Bettman conceived and proposed an ingenious plan that would allow us to acquire an NHL franchise while also helping to address and remedy an immediate need of the NHL.”

Meruelo will maintain business operations for a planned $3 billion project that will include a new arena in north Phoenix. If an arena is built, Meruelo will pay back the $1 billion and move forward with an expansion franchise. The Coyotes played their final game at 4,600-seat Mullett Arena on Wednesday night on the campus of Arizona State University.

“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,” said Meruelo. “But this is not the end for NHL hockey in Arizona. … I remain committed to this community and to building a first-class sports arena and entertainment district without seeking financial support from the public.”

The organization said it intends to win a June 27 state land auction on a 110-acre piece of property in Phoenix that could house a new arena and entertainment district. Reports have said it would take at least three years for the district to be completed in the latest in a years-long nomadic search for the Coyotes to have a home throughout multiple ownership dramas in the desert since it moved from Winnipeg.

The Coyotes first played downtown, sharing what is now known as Footprint Arena with the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. The franchised moved to Glendale in 2003 and hired NHL legend Wayne Gretzky as coach and added him to the ownership group before the Coyotes were sold to trucking magnate Jerry Moyes in 2005.

Four years later, the NHL took over the franchise when Moyes filed for bankruptcy with the league running the club for four years before it purchased by a group of Canadian businessmen in 2013. Philadelphia hedge fund manager Andrew Barroway bought controlling interest from that group the next year and the remaining shares of the team in 2017. Meruelo bought controlling interest from Barroway in 2019.

The Coyotes had a long-term deal to play at then-Gila River Arena in Glendale, then the franchise had been on an annual lease with Glendale until the city announced it would not renew for the 2021-2022 season.

The Coyotes had hoped to build a $2.3 billion entertainment district with a new arena in Tempe, but voters turned down the referendum last year, forcing the club to move to a different plan that has resulted in focusing on the state auction.

Bettman spoke about the Coyotes’ search for a new arena during All-Star Weekend in Toronto, saying “Alex Meruelo, as recently as last week, told me he was certain he was going to get this done and I don’t make it a practice of contradicting owners unless I have hard facts to the contrary. And I’m both hopeful and reasonably, reasonably confident that he’s going to do what he says.”

Since moving to Arizona, the franchise did have an early spurt of playoff competitiveness with five postseason berths in its first six seasons, although it lost in the first round each time. It missed the playoffs seven of the next eight seasons before another stretch of three consecutive playoff berths, capped by a run to the Western Conference finals in the 2011-2012 season.

But after that run, the Coyotes have only once made the playoffs and that was in the Covid-disrupted season of 2019-2020.

“It’s a bit of a mess over there for years,” Oilers forward Adam Henrique said postgame April 12 after the Coyotes beat Edmonton in overtime. “… Those guys are professional hockey players and want to be treated as such.”