New NHL team marks coming-of-age moment for Salt Lake City as a pro sports hub

SALT LAKE CITY -- To casual sports fans and radical extracurricular bluish Utah, it whitethorn look similar an NHL squad fell into Salt Lake City’s thigh successful the span of 2 weeks.

But section organizers accidental the Arizona Coyotes ' relocation to Utah is the merchandise of a yearslong effort to beckon nonrecreational hockey and different elite sports to the fast-growing superior city.

The determination announced Thursday marks a coming-of-age infinitesimal for Salt Lake City arsenic a pro sports hub successful the Mountain West, giving the midsize marketplace its 2nd large nonrecreational sports franchise successful the 45 years since it welcomed the NBA's Utah Jazz.

Now it remains to beryllium seen if the metropolis tin make the aforesaid enthusiasm for hockey that it has for basketball — and whether it tin supply the stableness required for a squad that has bounced from spot to spot implicit the past fewer years, observers say.

Utah already has plans bubbling for a caller hockey-specific stadium that could besides service arsenic a cardinal venue erstwhile it hosts the 2034 Winter Olympics, which the International Olympic Committee is expected to marque authoritative this summer. In the meantime, the squad volition stock the Delta Center with the Jazz.

Salt Lake City is besides aggressively pursuing an MLB enlargement squad — which would marque it location to 3 of the “Big Four” U.S. leagues — with precocious plans calling for a caller shot stadium. And Utah billionaire Ryan Smith, who owns the Jazz, pro men's and women's shot teams Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals, and, now, the caller hockey team, has applied to enactment with the metropolis to alteration portion of downtown into a sports and amusement district.

Together, those efforts grow Salt Lake City's footprint successful the sporting satellite and springiness the renowned wintertime sports destination a accidental to beryllium it tin prolong aggregate pro teams year-round.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall called the Coyotes' determination a “defining moment” successful the city's trajectory that she said unlocks caller imaginable for growth. State and municipal leaders person been outspoken astir leveraging a section emotion of sports to propel the metropolis forward. That strategy has proved palmy successful different midsize cities, including Las Vegas, which is location to NFL and NHL teams and has an MLB squad connected the way.

When fixed opportunities to big large sporting events, from the 2002 Winter Olympics to past year’s NBA All-Star Game, Salt Lake City hasn't failed to deliver, said Jeff Robbins, president and CEO of the Utah Sports Commission. Although the NHL transportation whitethorn look sudden, helium said, it was made imaginable by the assurance Utah has instilled successful manufacture leaders implicit respective decades.

“It didn't autumn successful our laps,” Robbins said. “What you’re seeing is simply a batch of momentum astir what we've been moving towards for a agelong time."

While respective different U.S. and Canadian cities person been vying for an NHL team, Salt Lake City was speedy to connection the Coyotes a “soft landing spot” aft years of tumult, said David Carter, a sports concern prof astatine the University of Southern California.

The Coyotes person bounced betwixt stadiums, astir precocious playing successful a 5,000-seat arena. Plans for a caller hockey stadium whitethorn person helped lure them to Utah, but Carter cautioned that they could again extremity up without a imperishable location if that doesn't cookware out, oregon if Smith's institution cannot make capable media revenue, summons income and sponsorships to guarantee the team's longevity.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said helium wanted to spot the Coyotes with trusted owners successful a determination wherever they could beryllium “successful immediately.”

“We focused connected the information that these are the types of owners that we want, and this is the benignant of assemblage we’d similar to beryllium a portion of,” Bettman said Friday.

Hockey fans beyond the Beehive authorities person besides questioned whether the mean metropolis — location to conscionable implicit 200,000 residents — tin prolong a pro team.

Including the suburbs, the greater Salt Lake Valley has a colonisation of astir 1.26 million, and a light-rail strategy that tin driblet suburbanites steps from the downtown stadium. Jazz fans person packed the Delta Center for decades, adjacent successful losing years, but clip volition archer whether the hoops bandwagon translates to a akin hockey hype.

Early information looks promising to Smith, who said Friday that the squad had already deed 22,700 play summons deposits — much than quadruple the seats successful the Coyotes’ existent stadium and astir doubly the Delta Center's existent capableness for hockey.

The athletics has started to instrumentality disconnected locally since Salt Lake City began hosting Frozen Fury, an NHL pre-season accumulation game, successful 2021, Robbins said. The vale is present location to 17 rinks, a younker hockey programme and a insignificant league squad that deed a caller mean attendance grounds this season.

For erstwhile NHL subordinate Ken Sabourin, who spent portion of his vocation playing successful the minors successful Salt Lake City, it was “a large spot to play” with bully crowds. While helium thinks the section infrastructure is successful place, helium worries the Coyotes — ranked 2nd to past successful their part — are not a beardown capable squad to captivate their caller community.

“It’s a bully hockey market; it’s a bully sports market," said the player-turned-analyst. "I deliberation they person the fans. It’s whether they’ll travel retired oregon not.”

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AP Hockey writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.