Re-ranking the 5 Best Options for an Arizona Coyotes Move

We'd need a lot of words and as much bandwidth as they'd allow us to go over the many ways the Coyotes' existence in Arizona has been threatened only to come out on the other side of it all with the team continuing to play hockey in the desert.

The latest effort to secure a future home in Arizona has come under fire as the mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, said he doesn't approve of the Coyotes potentially buying land at an auction in June and developing that into a new arena and entertainment complex.

Mind you, the land isn't in Scottsdale, only borders it, and the biggest issue seems to be that it would be developed and built by a relatively new group.

If that reads flimsy to you, you're not alone. But outside opposition to what the Coyotes want to do is nothing new, and the muddied waters surrounding anything the team wants to do to stay in the region have only served to open more discussion about which city the franchise will relocate to.

Of course, it's only fair to speculate on a move because the team has been really close to doing so in the recent past, and now that there are multiple big cities eager to land an NHL club, the speculation writes itself.

We're going to take a look at the places the Coyotes could call home next if everything in Arizona falls apart. Cats might have nine lives, but these Coyotes have survived many walls painted like tunnels that lead out of town.

5. Kansas City

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KANSAS CITY, MO - NOVEMBER 22: Exterior view of T-Mobile Center prior to the Hall of Fame Classic game between the Cincinnati Bearcats and the Illinois Fighting Illini on Monday November 22, 2021 at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, MO. (Photo by Nick Tre. Smith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Kansas City is another place that once had the NHL and has since been kicked around as an idea to bring it back there one day. There was a time when the Pittsburgh Penguins were rumored to move there when the franchise was up for sale, looking to get a new arena built.

The arena is the one thing they've got going for them in Kansas City because the T-Mobile Center is a large, modern facility without a primary tenant. But the sticking point with Kansas City is they've always wanted any team that was to play there to be locally owned to (ideally) prevent them from relocating again. With costs being so high now to buy teams, up and moving them is equally expensive so that's not as much of an issue anymore.

But talk around Kansas City died off in recent years until NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman mentioned during his press conference at the All-Star Game in February that among the cities that have reached out to the league about potentially bringing the NHL, there was Kansas City (along with Salt Lake City, Houston, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Omaha, Nebraska).

The roadblocks for the Coyotes to go to Kansas City are many. There's no obvious owner in place there. If there's a local billionaire eager to bring the NHL back to Kansas City, perhaps they would jump up the list. But a Kansas City Star columnist posited a year ago that corporate backing might be a bigger issue to contend with there.

Seeing the Coyotes potentially land in Kansas City seems almost like an even longer shot than going to Québec City.

4. Québec City

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Joe Sakic

One of the more heartbreaking relocations of the 1990s involved the Quebec Nordiques being sold and moving to Denver where they became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995. The Nordiques were bitter rivals to the Montréal Canadiens in the Québec province and anytime the Nordiques wound up in the playoffs, the atmosphere in Le Colisée de Québec was out of this world.

Seeing the Nordiques depart and then immediately winning the Stanley Cup in 1996 in Denver made their departure all the more crushing and fans in Québec City have been eager to see the NHL return. After all, if Winnipeg could get an NHL team back, surely they could too...right?

It hasn't been so easy. Multiple rounds of NHL expansion saw the league pass on any bids from Québec City to be considered and each time it was met with scorn after they were passed over for places like Las Vegas or Seattle with no NHL history or a built-in fan base.

If the Coyotes were to leave Phoenix, assuredly Québec City would beat the drum to bring them up north. But with the primary language there being French, the Canadian dollar still being a fraction of the worth of the American dollar and the population of Québec City hasn't grown any larger, the chances of the NHL trading out a massive media market like Phoenix for a small French-Canadian one like Québec City are microscopic.

3. Atlanta

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ATLANTA, GA - MAY 21: Fans rally outside Philips Arena to keep the Atlanta Thrashers based in Atlanta on May 21, 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been reported the Thrashers may relocate to Winnipeg, Canada. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

After how things broke down with the Thrashers in 2011 when the Spirit Group decided to splinter apart and sue each other rather than own a hockey team, it was brutally unfair to what was trying to be built up in Atlanta.

Now there are two groups eager to build a new arena for hockey in the Atlanta area and bring the sport back to the South and do it right.

The thought of the Coyotes, the former Winnipeg Jets, being the team that brings hockey back to Atlanta after seeing the Thrashers leave to become the new Winnipeg Jets adds a lot of layers of confusion to the stories of all these teams, but one thing Atlanta has going for it to make such a possibility easier to stomach is the size of the Atlanta market. It was an enticing reason why the NHL went back there in 1999 and having Ted Turner as the owner sealed the deal.

With two separate groups, one of them with former NHL forward and current TNT analyst Anson Carter involved in the process, it seems virtually automatic that the NHL will return to Atlanta. A lot has changed since the Thrashers left town and Atlanta is an even bigger and wealthier city than it was then. But they seem more poised to get a fully fresh start than potentially landing the Coyotes. What a bitterly cruel twist of fate that would be if they did though.

2. Houston

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For years, Houston has felt like the one city that was most likely to get an NHL team next.

Houston is one of the biggest cities in the United States and with population comes fans with money to spend and ratings to provide for broadcasts. If the Coyotes were to move out of the Phoenix area, an already large market, moving to an even larger city would be deeply appealing to the league.

Like Salt Lake, Houston has an NBA owner who is eager to add an NHL team to their portfolio in Tilman Fertitta. In February, Fertitta told Bloomberg that he sees an NHL team as a major boost to downtown Houston and that with the success of the Astros in Major League Baseball, the Texans in the NFL, and the city's MLS team, Houston is absolutely a sports city, and the NHL would only add to it.

What doesn't make Houston an absolute slam dunk (sorry) is that Fertitta wants any deal to bring a team there to work for both sides. Read: Fertitta doesn't exactly want to break the bank to make it happen. While expansion fees are costly, the price tag to buy the Coyotes and relocate them might not be quite as tough.

That's all negotiating, however. The reality here is Houston would make for a massive media market to add to the league and giving the Dallas Stars a regional rival to help build them up would be huge. And, if you like conspiracy theories, you could argue that when the NHL moved the Coyotes to the Central Division when Vegas entered the league, they were greasing the skids for them to move to Houston in the first place.

1. Salt Lake City

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Delta Center in Salt Lake City

Amazingly, Salt Lake City, Utah has jumped quickly to the top of the list.

The owner of the Utah Jazz, Ryan Smith, made it clear that his group not only is interested in bringing the NHL to Utah, but he has a plan in place to either bring a team that wishes to relocate and get a new arena built for them soon or that he's willing to play the long game and go for an expansion franchise.

Smith even went so far as to post a survey on Twitter to ask NHL fans in Utah what they'd want the team's nickname to be should one land there.

Owners with money to pull it off and a vested interest in bringing the NHL to their city are a surefire way to move to the top of the list and the Smiths are all about doing it. Suppose they were to become the new home for the Coyotes. In that case, they'd have a natural location to have rivalries with Colorado and continue to be rivals with Vegas, albeit in a different division. Having a Salt Lake team in the Central would ease travel for the Avalanche, too.

Considering how clear they've been about their desire to land an NHL team, you'd have to think they'd be the favorites, especially because it's not a guarantee the league would expand (although that seems more and more likely as time goes on).