Arizona Coyotes reportedly working on deal to send team to Utah

A very interesting development on Wednesday afternoon has Arizona Coyotes, the National Hockey League and the Smith Entertainment Group working on a deal to move the franchise to Utah.

After a report on Wednesday morning that suggested that the Arizona Coyotes could be on the move ahead of next season, Daily Faceoff's Frank Seravalli has dropped a bombshell update on the situation, stating that the National Hockey League, Smith Entertainment Group (the parent company of the Utah Jazz NBA franchise) and the Arizona Coyotes have begun establishing the groundwork on a deal that would see the franchise moved to Salt Lake City.


Seravalli has stated that the deal is far from done, with many, many t's to cross and i's to dot, with a lot of legal hurdles to jump, but that significant progress has been made today.


As far as how this would work, ESPN's Greg Wyshynski has revealed that the plan may be to have Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo to sell the team to the NHL for approximately $1 billion, who would then turn around and sell the team to Smith Entertainment Group for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion.

I know that some will wonder where that extra $300M would go. According to Wyshynski's report, the other 31 NHL owners would split that money as a result of provision in the official sale.


The Fourth Period's David Pagnotta has also indicated that if such a deal gets done, it wouldn't close the door on having an NHL team in Arizona. It would simply give current owner Alex Meruelo time to get an arena situation sorted out before bringing a team back to the State as early as 2027-28.


What a crazy turn of events this was for an otherwise quiet Wednesday.