The Kraken might not be great, but perspective is always a helpful tool in times like these.
After all…you could be a Coyotes fan right now.
Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports confirmed yesterday that after 28 years in the Phoenix valley, the Coyotes will be sold to Ryan Smith of the Qualtrics analytics company, and relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah. The official announcement is scheduled to be made later next week, the Coyotes players and staff were told yesterday of the sale, and will tour their accommodations in the Beehive State next week.
Wait, why is this happening?
Oh boy, strap in.
The Coyotes have long been the punching bag, laughingstock, and scapegoat of the NHL’s sins since their move from Winnipeg back in 1996. Some of it from the stunning idea of having a team in the NHL below the Mason-Dixon line. Some of it came from Jets fans incensed that the wonderful works of Teemu Selanne and Dale Hawerchuk were stashed into the desert where they couldn’t point at them and go “That was us!”
But mostly, it’s been about the constant instability the team has faced. A major part of it is that the many, many ownership groups the team has cycled through; most of whom have been wildly and nakedly incompetent or money grubbing in a way that’s impressive even for the kind of person who generally bankrolls a North American sports franchise.
A lightning-quick perusal of the many men who built this disaster is enough to let you know the idea was maybe doomed from the start:
- Rich Burke and Steve Gluckstern: the two business men who thought they were being oh-so-clever by moving the Jets to Minnesota ended up bringing the team to Jerry Colangelo’s Phoenix Suns arena, the then America West Arena, which was not built for hockey and the things they had to do to make it presentable to fans reflected it. That said, Burke really tried to build something but was hamstrung by money concerns and the arena.
- Steve Ellman: The first of the real estate rubes. He wanted to put the team in Scottsdale, but got into a fight with a Red Robin that survived the initial demolition of the property he wanted to build on (no, I am not kidding), and the constant delays caused him to look elsewhere; to the city of Glendale. Glendale is 40 minutes northwest from Phoenix and at the time was being eyed as the next great suburb of the future…so he dropped them there. This would have disastrous consequences later down the line.
- Wayne Gretzky: Yes. That Wayne Gretzky. He was brought on as a minority owner and as a president of hockey ops during Ellman and Moyes’ time. He was also coach for a little bit! It didn’t go well!
- Jerry Moyes: In hindsight, maybe the man who did the most damage to this team year over year than any individual sales figure. He purchased the team and the Westgate complex; primarily to flip just about all of it to someone else and relocate; and was annoyed by the NHL telling him he could not do that, and proceeded to throw a hissy fit by dropping the team into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. This is where we learned all those nasty fun facts about the teams lack of profitability and tried selling it to a bunch of potential candidates for this list. Finally, a court decided there was only one group who could actually pay for such a thing…
- The NHL Itself: Basically, they wrested control and immediately tried to find another buyer. The Coyotes had their best seasons ever under their stewardship, as it turns out. Life’s funny.
- IceArizona: A bunch of rich dudes chucking money around that were able to keep the team in Glendale. This group actually felt like they were trying, but ultimately they were just trying to flip the investment.
- Andrew Barroway: a hedge-fund manager who bought out IceArizona and proceeded over the Coyotes’ repeated issues with the city of Glendale, namely that it had not turned into the great suburb of the future and was just a regular suburb by now, and eventually tried really hard to build an arena in Tempe…
- Alex Meruelo: …which lands us today in front of the guy who failed to get a deal done with Glendale nor pay his rent on time, tried desperately to get a building in Tempe and failed, the Coyotes to play in Arizona State’s arena, and ultimately the sale of the Coyotes to the guy who owns the Jazz (who really really really wants a new arena for the Jazz and presumably the Coyotes.)…all the while he pockets the right to bring the Coyotes back in 5 years and $500 Million.
All the while, the NHL has steadfastly allowed the transaction between these gents and organizations (including themselves), while doggedly trying to keep one of the fastest growing TV markets alive in their league. None of this even gets into the repeated financial problems, the player retention issues, the fact that the league uses them as a dumping ground for bad contracts so they can stay cap compliant and that’s just cool with everyone…It’s a mess. And it’s been a mess for almost three decades.
What’s a shame is, had the Coyotes never existed, there’s a strong chance the Kraken are still trying to figure out who their goalie is. ASU probably never picks up a hockey program, and the youth programs in AZ, which are primed to be a hotbed in the coming years, never exist. As much as they’ve been a gross failure…their bones have been used to create a strong structure of hockey in the desert.
All that’s in flux now too unless Arizona State and the Tuscon Roadrunners pick up the slack. It’s those long-suffering Yotes fans and those youth hockey programs that are the real victims in all this.
Alright, so what does that actually mean for the Kraken?
Well, for one thing, they’re not playing four games a year at Mullett Arena, and for the time being; the Kraken’s final game in the state of Arizona ended with a disappointing (read: NEXT TO UNFORGIVEABLE) OT loss. It will also shave any potential flight times to and from Seattle down about an hour and fifteen minutes, give or take any delays.
As for on-ice competition? Well, Ryan Smith might be willing to pony up for better free agents this offseason, but Players are also pretty sensitive to the way tax rates change in the States; and the move to Utah almost doubles it from 2.5% to 4.85%, which could, in theory, potentially scare off players looking to cash in on successful years, and teams looking to drop off unwieldy contracts they can’t justify paying. While the bigger arena helps make them seem more professional, in the short term I really don’t anticipate that the Coyotes (or Salt Lake Sting or whatever name they end up picking for themselves) will be changing from what they already are: a building team in a basketball arena, looking to move to a better one. Just like they were when they made their way to Phoenix.
Funny how some things never change.
As for potential re-alignment with the Divisions as is? Perhaps some might occur, but I think it would be more schedule based than divisional; because NHL teams do not like Conference/Division realignment and a number of teams would rather fold than ever move conferences ever again. I would imagine that in-conference road trips would bunch up games against the Kings, Knights, Ducks, Avs, and Salt Lake, as they’re practically all on the same 2-and-a-half hour stretch of air travel from each other, and approximately two days bus-ride in any direction.
Of course, if you wanted to get spicy, this would be a great time to bring back more segmented divisions; eight divisions of four teams, with a 1-8 playoff picture for each conference!
A hypothetical Western Conference in this setup would look like this:
| Northwest Division | Pacific Division |
|---|---|
| Seattle | Los Angeles |
| Vancouver | San Jose |
| Calgary | Anaheim |
| Edmonton | Vegas |
| Mountain Division | Midwest Division |
|---|---|
| Colorado | Chicago |
| Salt Lake | Minnesota |
| Dallas | St. Louis |
| Nashville | Winnipeg |
Sure, it would mean the Kraken are more than likely stuck with Connor McDavid and Elias Pettersson as in-division foes forever and would probably guarantee the Golden Knights near-automatic passage into the playoffs; but it would be a fun experiment!
…For everyone else. I’m gonna say I’m in the minority of people who would want things to stay as is for a little bit. As it stands, I don’t anticipate the Kraken experiencing more games against this team…just different ones.
Are there any lessons to be learned from this whole debacle?
Yeah. Count yourself lucky.
No really, I’m serious.
The NHL in it’s not-too-distant past was brazenly cavalier about expansion and about keeping said expansion teams alive at any cost; no matter what it took for them to remain. The end result of that process is a number of teams that spent years, decades even, as punching bags and organizational tire fires because the people in charge had no interest in building good teams or in keeping the teams around them in good standing with the rest of the NHL.
The Coyotes are of course the poster child of this mismanagement problem, but the Hurricanes spent just about every minute until Tom Dundon took over as a walking soap opera for the Karmanos family; Ottawa was both saved and also doomed by their former owner Eugene Melnyk’s constant problems; Columbus is and remains a tire fire; and Florida a mere decade ago was having similar issues to the Coyotes until Bill Zito took over as GM and President of Hockey Ops, and that was three owners into their existence and over a decade of mediocrity before all of that.
The League doesn’t learn quick, but it does, on a long enough time scale, figure things out. The Knights and Kraken are the beneficiaries of a lot of failure being learned from over the past two or three decades; at least on the business side of things. Careful vetting and interviewing of potential ownership candidates alongside an absolute boatload of cash allowed the Kraken to exist in the first place, and the people in charge, well above Ron Francis’ head, are committed to making Climate Pledge and the Seattle Kraken a competitive, successful franchise.
Not every team gets, or has gotten, that luxury.
Our hearts at DJLR otherwise break for the fans, for the myriad youth hockey players in the Phoenix area who got to go to hockey camps and fall in love with the sport down in AZ because of the Coyotes pumping so much money they generally didn’t have into those programs, for our colleagues over at Five for Howling who’ve had to put up with this nonsense for far too long, and for the players; who like the fans, have been getting jerked around in a scheme to take a toxic business venture and make a buck out of it at the expense of just about all of the above.
Guess we’ll have to prepare our best Mormon jokes for whatever next year looks like.
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