You may have heard by now, but the Arizona Coyotes are moving into a much, much smaller arena next season.
After playing in Gila River Arena — which seats 18,300 fans– from 2003 to 2022, the Coyotes will share Arizona State’s new on-campus arena with the Sun Devils until at least the 2024-25 season.
The only problem is that arena seats only a hair above 5,000 fans.
Here are the renderings of the seating in the arena, which come courtesy of a virtual seat map on the Coyotes’ website now that tickets for the upcoming season are on sale:
As we wrote a few months ago, this is an embarrassment for the league, to say the absolute least.
Not only are the Coyotes set to trot out an absolute joke of a roster once again, but they’re now doing it in a college hockey rink.
And this isn’t even about the players, who will be feeling the brunt of this in a different way — their schedule.
First, 20 of the Coyotes’ first 24 games are on the road. The club will play just two home games in October and November.
And don’t forget, because they’re sharing the arena with an NCAA team, there will be no Saturday night home games except for one during the NCAA Christmas break.
This whole situation is an embarrassment for the league, and a disaster for the players, full stop.
That being said, we’d be kidding ourselves if we weren’t somewhat excited to see what this all results in. What will broadcasts look like? Will the environment be somewhat okay if the rink is packed with rowdy college kids?
The Coyotes’ arena debacle is like watching a slow-moving car crash. You don’t want to, but you can’t help but stare and see what happens.
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