Movie quote of the day:
“You didn’t see me. I was already gone.”
— Anton Chigurh, “No Country for Old Men” (2007)
Well, it’s now official. After nearly 30 years of being in the Phoenix area, the Arizona Coyotes have suspended operations and are moving to Salt Lake City. The NHL board of governors approved the sale of the team to current Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith recently. The history of the team will stay behind in Arizona as the organization continues to look for a new arena in an effort to draw a current team to the area. The new Utah team will share the Delta Center with the Jazz. It’ll also act as an expansion team for the NHL and have a new name, logo, color scheme, etc. That’s probably the right decision because I doubt it’ll want any affiliation with the Coyotes.
Arizona was the laughing stock of the NHL. Since the original Winnipeg Jets relocated to the Phoenix area and became the Coyotes in 1996, the team had 11 different ownership groups, only 10 postseason appearances (four since 2003), and played in three different arenas. Gila River Arena (now Diamond Desert Arena) went as far as to not renew its contract with the Coyotes after the 2021-22 season, alleging that the organization owed $1.3 million in taxes, including $250,000 to the City of Glendale.
The league even had to take over ownership of the team when previous majority owner Jerry Moyes filed for bankruptcy in 2009. The Phoenix area didn’t support the Coyotes, either. The organization consistently ranked near the bottom in attendance by a pretty considerable margin. That’s why I wouldn’t hold my breath about the organization finding a long-term home in the Phoenix area.
The decision to move the Coyotes was long overdue and I’m not surprised in the least that Salt Lake City was the choice. I even listed it as a possible destination for Arizona just last year. It’s a cold weather city known for its skiing and winter sports, even hosting the Winter Olympics back in 2002. Salt Lake City supports both the Jazz and Real Salt Lake, and is even being eyeballed by MLB as a possible market for an expansion team. Smith seems like a competent owner, too. There’s no reason to think the city won’t support a hockey team.
My biggest takeaway from Arizona’s move is that Houston wasn’t the destination. It felt like that was the likely landing spot. Moving from the Phoenix area to Salt Lake City is a cost effective move, but moving to Houston wouldn’t have shook up the NHL landscape at all. Arizona was already competing in the Central Division of the Western Conference and moving to Houston wouldn’t have changed that. The Dallas Stars, which is the only team in the league located in Texas, compete in the same division.
Houston has more to offer the NHL, though. It’s the fourth-largest city in the country, with a population of 7.1 million people in the metropolitan area, and is the largest city to not have a team in each of the “Big Four” sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL). The people of Houston support its teams, too. The Astros, Rockets, and Texans always rank in the top half of their respected leagues when it comes to attendance. The Toyota Center, which is the city’s arena that hosts the Rockets, is capable of hosting NHL games, too.
I’m not just asking this question as someone who lives in the Houston area, nor as a hockey fan who’d like to watch my Boston Bruins play in-person sometime. I’m asking this just as a sports fan, how does the NHL not already have a footprint in Houston? Even if you were a sports fan that didn’t know anything about hockey, you probably would’ve already assumed Houston had a team just because it’s one of the largest markets in the country.
The NHL has expanded from 21 to 32 teams since 1991, and has now had nine different teams relocate since 1976. None of them to Houston. Two of those teams to relocate are now defunct, with the Coyotes likely to join them. It just doesn’t make sense why the league hasn’t given Houston more consideration. Texas is plenty big enough to house two teams. I refuse to believe that it’s because the NHL doesn’t think a team would work in Houston because of its large Latino population. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami — all of which have large Latino populations — have six hockey teams between them and still get plenty of support.
With NASA, the oil industry, beaches, and the Port of Houston in the surrounding area, there are millions of people that move to the city every year for work or for entertainment. Those people come from a variety of different areas with different backgrounds. There could be millions of people who could be hockey fans already living in Houston. The population of the Houston metropolitan area has also increased steadily in recent years.
The only thing that makes sense for why the NHL doesn’t already have a team in Houston is because the owner of the Rockets doesn’t want to share the Toyota Center with a hockey team. That’s understandable. Regardless, the league needs to do everything it can to get this right. Having a team in Houston would create more revenue and make the NHL more valuable. More importantly, I’d be able to watch quality hockey in-person without having to drive nearly five hours to Dallas.
All Things Sports from a Millennial 