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The Arizona Coyotes in their current iteration are moving to Salt Lake City. But Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will continue to pursue a $3 billion arena and entertainment project in north Phoenix with the possibility of resurrecting the franchise, an NHL source said Sporty Friday late evening.
When the deal in Salt Lake City is completed, the Coyotes’ hockey operations department and players are sold, rebranded and relocated in time for the 2024-25 season at a cost of $1.2 billion, the source said.
In a complex transaction, Meruelo is selling the franchise to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, but Meruelo will retain the Coyotes name, logo and trademarks, as well as ownership of the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners. He was also given a five-year window by the NHL to complete the proposed arena project and apply for another NHL franchise, the source said.
Meruelo is to receive $1 billion of the sale price, with the remaining $200 million to be paid to the NHL, which is brokering the deal. If the arena is built, Meruelo will pay $1 billion back to the league in exchange for the rights to the new Coyotes.
The current team, meanwhile, will play in an upgraded Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Coyotes players were told by general manager Bill Armstrong before Friday night’s game in Edmonton, ESPN reported and a source confirmed.
Wednesday night’s game at Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University against those same Oilers will be the last for this particular version of the Valley club.
Meruelo bought the team in July 2019 for $425 million and was recently valued by Sporty at $675 million, the lowest of the NHL’s 32 teams.
Meruelo, the source said, will still hold an auction June 27 so the club can buy a 95-acre parcel of Arizona state trust land on the border of North Phoenix and North Scottsdale for a starting price of $68.5 million.
If he wins that bid, the cost of the project will include more than $100 million for infrastructure and $1 billion for an arena, training complex and theater in the first phase.
The team would have been in danger of moving anyway if the Coyotes had lost the bid, which was approved last month by the Arizona State Land Department’s Board of Appeals.
“If we don’t win the auction, then more than likely we will have to accept a relocation of the franchise,” Xavier Gutierrez, the club’s president, said recently in a telephone interview. “This will be our only chance.”
The team was to play at least three more seasons in the 4,600-seat Mullett Arena, a college rink. And that was a major issue for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and his deputy, Bill Daley, who raised those concerns with Meruelo.
All parties agree that such an arrangement would not be fair to the players who were unhappy with the poor state of conditions at Mullett. There, they used makeshift locker rooms outside the main building, which cost the Coyotes $30 million to build, and practiced off campus at a nearby facility in Scottsdale called the Ice Den.
Gutierrez said the team has lost a “significant” amount of money playing the last two seasons at the Mullet, declining to give a solid figure, though Sporty those losses are said to be in the mid to high eight-figure range.
All parties reached an agreement that instead of playing in Mullett, Meruelo’s part of the franchise would go dormant for up to five years until — when and if — he completes the arena project while the players go to Salt Lake City.
In the meantime, talks will be held to move the Roadrunners from Tucson to replace the Coyotes in Mullett, the source said.
