The NHL more than likely will eventually return to Phoenix if history is a gauge.
In a little more than a month, the National Hockey League will know if Alex Meruelo succeeded in his bid to get Arizona state owned land in Phoenix that would be used to build a hockey arena. If Alex Meruelo fails to win the bid, there is a good chance that he will walk away from the National Hockey League with a billion-dollar parting gift. The NHL is convinced Phoenix is a good market and if Alex Meruelo cannot win the land auction on June 27th, the league will just let the market stay barren for a while and maybe look for another owner at some point. At some point, the renovated Phoenix arena that houses the National Basketball Association’s Suns franchise will be antiquated and there will be a push to build a new arena in town. Perhaps that generation of politicians will be much smarter than the ones who ran the city in the 1980s when they decided to be an arena that was useless as a multipurpose venue because it was built solely for basketball.
The National Hockey League views the Arizona Coyotes franchise as inactive and could terminate the franchise in 2029 if Meruelo does not have an arena ready for use. But the NHL has returned to markets it has vacated. Markets such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Minneapolis- St. Paul, Denver and New York. Atlanta failed twice yet the NHL has some interest in returning to the Atlanta metropolitan area. The New York Americans franchise went on the inactive list in 1942 because of World War II and the team was scheduled to return as the Brooklyn Americans in Brooklyn in 1946. No arena was ever built in Brooklyn and the team was “retired” The NHL needs a building and maybe a new owner in Phoenix sometime in the near future.
Proposed arena.
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