Expect Coyotes to find a way to stay in Arizona
Before hockey fans in Houston, Kansas City or even Quebec City get their hopes up as a new home for the Arizona Coyotes, expect the NHL team to take the temperature in nearby Tempe.
If the Coyotes are true to their word to being “one hundred per cent committed to finding a longterm arena solution in Arizona,” then pulling the plug at Gila River Arena next year — announced Thursday by politicians in the Phoenix suburb — is not a death knell.
Many expect team ownership will use the final season of the Glendale lease to pursue a new arena deal in Tempe, a 20-minute drive east and a little closer to Phoenix than Glendale, an intention known long before Thursday. The team is trying to partner with Tempe on a new entertainment district surrounding the rink, like the one that gradually appeared in Glendale.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman did not see the team remaining in Glendale in a year-to-year lease agreement, but insists he wants it to stay in state, given how much work went into propping up the Coyotes already since the 1990s and based on early success on the league’s other desert team, the Vegas Golden Knights.
But the Coyotes have not had much on-ice success and were behind in some payments to Glendale, prompting that city to give notice it will pursue another anchor tenant. If the Coyotes do leave Arizona after ’21-22, the league would likely want a western U.S. venue to maintain its newly created balance of two 16-team conferences. If Tempe is a go, the Coyotes will have to find temporary digs until a new arena is built there. That could be troublesome as the Phoenix Suns basketball team and the University of Arizona reportedly are cool to sharing space.
Rick Jeanneret’s 51st season behind
the microphone for the Buffalo Sabres will be his last, working 20 of the team’s 82 regular-season games, all at home, on MSG cable and WGR radio.
“This will definitely be it,” the 79-year-old hall of fame play-byplay man told the Buffalo News, after handling 20 games last year in the shortened season. “I was offered the opportunity and I thought it is one more kick of the can.”
The COVID -19 situation with no fans at the KeyBank Center last year was not the way Jeanneret or the club thought his remarkable career should end.
“To spend 50 years doing any one job is more than a person can ask for, let alone one as special as mine,” Jeanneret said.