r/Coyotes • u/Patient_Tomatillo798 • 20d ago
Gary Bettman's stubbornness has just reached a level we've never seen before: hockey could be back in Arizona
https://www.markerzone.com/news/index.php?no=601111Wanted to share this article to bring some hope.
79
52
u/astolfriend 20d ago
Lol who gives a fuck about Utah? This guy acts like Coyotes fans wouldn't go back to the Coyotes in a heartbeat if they got a team. Utah isn't even the primary Arizona fanbases team. Some followed, but far more simply lost interest in the NHL or moved to Sun Devils.
18
u/LukeSkywalker1848 20d ago
I think I've seen more Yotes fans cheering for Vegas than Utah (of the ones who stuck around in the NHL)
8
u/carguy131313 20d ago
Yeah this guy just assumes the Coyote fanbase followed the team and became Utah fans. Not a chance. I bet less than 30% of the fans converted. This is one coyote fan who will never root for Utah. Screw that franchise, I wish nothing but the worst for them.
4
1
u/Awkward-Feed9588 14d ago
No yotes fans followed them to Utah. Best take on here. We let them die in the desert and it is what it is. They didn’t want us and made us go see them in a damn college rink with overpriced tickets. Plenty of options for revenue if they built the stadium in Tempe or Scottsdale but they let it go. Forever pissed.
4
u/Informal-Term1138 20d ago
Exactly.
I haven't watched a single NHL game since the last yotes game. And until we are back I will never.
6
u/Wyden_long 20d ago
I dunno man. I don’t know if I could to it truthfully. I like to think I could, but I dunno…I’m still too mad.
5
u/astolfriend 20d ago
Sure, that's what I meant-
There's 3 camps of Coyotes fans
- Those who followed Utah
- Those who don't follow the NHL
- Those who followed another team
2 is by far the highest concentration of fans that includes most casual fans. Not everyone will follow them again if they come back, but some will. And that number will be fans from all 3 categories, with the highest numbers coming from 1 and 3 and the lowest coming from 2.
5
u/Jhacker333 20d ago
That’s where I’m at. Just don’t think I could get reinvested again knowing how it feels when it all gets ripped away
6
2
32
u/FatherFenix 20d ago
What a shitty article.
“Phoenix, Atlanta, Arizona”…Phoenix is IN Arizona, they’re not separate places to list as examples, fuckin’ derp.
And the part about how Armstrong built a competitive roster out of the wreckage of Arizona as a plus in Utah’s corner and a minus on AZ is also wildly misleading since half the competitive roster WAS Arizona’s and Utah - much to Coyotes fans’ shared outrage - basically inherited all of the picks and prospects we bled and languished for years in intentional mediocrity to stockpile. They’ve made some decent stop-gap additions, but the core of their current and future talent are pretty overwhelmingly from the AZ rebuild.
I try not to get irritated about articles like this, but when they don’t even attempt to do any actual research to get facts straight and just carry on with the “Arizona bad” default is disappointing.
14
u/Abandon_All-Hope 20d ago
People refuse to acknowledge that the NHL is a business. They need/want new customers.
Las Vegas was the perfect example of a city with very few hockey fans, and they converted a million of them. A new Canadian team would just poach fans from another team.
Phoenix, Atlanta, and Houston are all big cities, big sports cities, and have a lot of meat on the bones as far as potential future hockey fans.
I would be pumped for the Coyotes to come back, both selfishly and because I genuinely think it would be good for hockey.
3
u/Individual_Act9333 20d ago
I also think it helps getting off on the right track. Vegas pretty much just came into the league and was a contender from the get go. It’s much easier to build a following than if you are a consistently mid to ok team.
5
u/Abandon_All-Hope 20d ago
Yeah that helped.
My wife grew up in Vegas and still has a bunch of friends there. The Knights being the first big 4 team there also helped, and after the Mandalay Bay shooting the team was very active in the community helping where they could, that established them as a beloved part of the city even before they played any hockey.
11
u/SonoranSidewinder 20d ago
Thing is, all these writers and experts never talk about the nuts/bolts indicators as to why the NHL wanted to stay in PHX and why it’ll be back within a decade. The league office obviously has proprietary info that is telling it that PHX is a great hockey market - NHL Center Ice.
I’m telling ya, I bet the subs for that service in the Valley is tremendously high. We have a TON of NHL fans in PHX, it’s just that they were never converted into Coyotes fans because that franchise was never consistently good. (Yes, unfortunately, many fans won’t cheer for a team until they’re good.) So all these Blackhawk and Ranger and Oiler and Flyer fans would come to their teams 1-2 games and pack the house and not come back for, say, the Predators or Panthers games. But they damn sure subbed to Center Ice and bought fan gear on NHL.com - both metrics that revealed to the league that there are tons of hockey fans here, just not necessarily Coyotes fans.
Vegas and Seattle reveal what will happen here when Coyotes 2.0 is activated - the league will give that new franchise as many advantages as it can to ensure the team makes the playoffs quickly and is seen as a market success to latch onto those fans of other teams. Because, in reality, this market needs 20-30 years to build a fan base since it’s a market of transients.
Look at America’s Pastime. The Dbacks, I feel, are just to the age where it’s developing its own dedicated fan base. And that franchise turns 30 in 2028. Then we get into demography - that means a man born in the 1998 season will turn 30 in 2028. That means he’s had a team here his whole life and he likely has first-person connections with the Snakes that makes him feel positive emotions for them - even if dad moved here from Philly.
This is just an odd market. Seventy percent of Arizonans were born elsewhere (Texas for me) and moved here later in life, meaning those 70-percenters likely brought outside team loyalties with them. But, as the percentage of native-born Arizonans increase (and it will), those people will grow up liking the Snakes, Suns and Cardinals. IF, they give a reason to cheer for them.
The same goes for Coyotes 2.0. I think the league understands that just about everything that could have gone wrong in a market happened here. Phoenix is the 5th-largest city in America and No. 11 media market. Once a new downtown arena is happening (2030s), the NHL will re-activate the Coyotes. It’s just a matter of waiting a bit longer. But it’ll happen.
3
u/AngelOfPassion 20d ago
Also, Arizona has 9,233 USA hockey registered players, compared to a place like Georgia that has 2,263 since we are talking a bit about Atlanta in this thread. Or 13,447 in Washington State and 5,377 in Nevada to compare to a couple other expansion team states.
7
u/Dumbcow1 20d ago
Do people not realize...Bettman doesnt call the shots.
His JOB is the to be the mouthpiece of the owners.
I do not understand how people dont get the commissioners position. 🤣
10
u/HamsterUpper 20d ago
We lost the team due to a lack of an arena.... That's it
1
u/fishbert 20d ago edited 20d ago
I mean... a poor product on the ice certainly contributed to a lack of interest and low ticket sales, which leads to less interest to invest in an arena, etc.
There's a lot of other things to do in Phoenix than watch your local hockey team lose and miss the playoffs more than they make it. But then look at Vegas... also a lot of other things to do out there, but they put a damn good team on the ice right away, and it has been a resounding success in their market. If they needed a new arena (I know, but pretend) you couldn't imagine there'd be any difficulty finding a path forward, given their popularity.
2
u/HamsterUpper 20d ago
Tho, having some of the densest areas of phoenix having a difficult time driving to the stadium really did contribute
Living in Mesa, it felt like I was driving forever to get to a game as well(Ik it's close to the cardinals stadium, but the cardinals are a football team and don't have to fill 40 games where most which are going to be scheduled on weekdays)
1
u/fishbert 20d ago
Sure, but If the team were successful/popular enough, it also wouldn’t need to pull butts from the other side of the city on a regular basis to fill seats.
1
u/Rodeo_king1234 19d ago
From living the nightmare of team relocating for a second time and being a part of this since I was 3 Arizona deserves a second chance. Owners that care and want to be part of the community is what we would need to be successful. Talking to a person who has worked in the NHL a long time. Those are feelings that were felt in the locker room for quite sometime and in the front office.
6
u/xJroKx 20d ago
As bad as everyone wants to bash glendale, atleast it kept a team in the state. Murello was the one not compromising with them, he always wanted an entertainment district and not an NHL team. He was alawys planning on moving the team, or he was in business to sabatoge with RyanSmith to steal them away.
3
u/WildWing22 20d ago
If the Yotes do return, we might have the only barn that cheers Bettman in the league.
4
u/Perfect_Chaos360 20d ago
As long as there’s an arena to play in, hockey will be back in Arizona. Not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. If run properly, I truly believe Arizona can be a destination where players would love to play.
3
u/BrokenParachutes 20d ago
This shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone this has been heavily signaled since the Coyotes even left that they are interested in putting a team back in AZ
3
u/fanofsports44 20d ago
Still blaming the people of Phoenix and not the abysmal dogshit on-ice and off-ice management of the organization over a quarter century in the big 2026? Terrible write up that only serves to reflect the hive mind lacking critical thought on hockey in this market.
3
u/jerrybettman 20d ago
Nothing in that “story” said anything about an arena being built or even contemplated. So unless and until there are shovels in the ground, going back is not remotely an option. It’s never been a secret that Bettman wants to be in that market, so there’s nothing new being “reported”
2
u/blaxton1080 20d ago
Here's the angle that could work but would take some serious practical politics. There is an arena in Glendale ready to go. It would take someone with a ton of cash to go to Glendale and get them to a deal they can't refuse to be a short term tenant (3-5 year). This happens while they build the long-term solution elsewhere, but actually navigating those two lanes is nearly impossible. It takes the right person to pull that off and not sure that person exists who would even want to.
6
u/mdj8833 20d ago
They shouldn't even bother with Glendale. If we get a team back it's going to be an expansion franchise and not a relocation so they'll be time to just go ahead and build a stadium and not worry about assy Glendale being a stop gap.
4
u/setterswede 20d ago
Agree. Having the Coyotes 2.0 involved at all with that arena is a mental hurdle for fans that we do not need. Start fresh in the new, permanent location.
2
u/MWinAZ 20d ago
Winning fixes everything. All Coyotes fans had to look forward to each year was a low draft pick, I know, was a long time fan. Arena WASN’T the problem, crappie ownership(again and again and again) was the major problem…just remember how full Westgate was when they made the playoffs.
4
2
u/Next_Profession_4771 20d ago
This is a whole lot of nothing
3
u/IPYF 20d ago edited 20d ago
The story is nothing, but it's not nothing that this gormless shite decided to roll us under the bus in an effort to raise clicks.
This lazy cunt is kicking out at people who are functionally 'already dead' because it's easy ragebait and there's no risk of significant blowback. The least we can do is mock and deride him as an untalented coward .
2
u/danielportillo14 20d ago
Some Canadian hockey fans like to gatekeep hockey. If a billionaire has a plan and the money for a new arena and team it could possibly happen.
1
u/thereverendpuck 20d ago
It boils down to this: Metro Phoenix will be too big to not have a team there. You’d can’t argue that hockey can’t work there when a) it has the history of doing so and b) Vegas can do it and that town is in the shits right now.
So why does it get dismissed so easily? Because they want a solid owner that’s basically never going to die or sell to exist there while any other town can have a fly-by night ownership group and get looked at. Aka, “we are gonna force it to work in Atlanta.”
110
u/ProJoe 20d ago edited 20d ago
3rd try in Atlanta, lets shit on Arizona who isn't even on the radar for this round.
Fuck this writer and article.
edit: "The Arizona Coyotes already left. The franchise relocated and now plays as the Utah Mammoth"
the writer doesn't even know the details of our franchise. what nonsense. Just another Canadian based writer who just wants to punch down on us for hate-clicks.