Last night, we officially learned that the Arizona Coyotes will be moving to Salt Lake City for the 2024-2025 National Hockey League season.
It’s big news, and one we’ve been anticipating for a few days with the many rumors on the subject.
It’s a shame for the Coyotes and their plans for a new amphitheatre, but honestly, it was the best possible solution for the NHL.
It avoids having a team playing in a 5,000-person arena for several more seasons.
And who knows, maybe Arizona will have an NHL team again when the amphitheater is built.
All this to say that, as of next season, the Arizona Coyotes will become the [Name to be inserted] of Salt Lake City or Utah.
And what we know about this team so far is that it’s likely to be very aggressive very quickly.
Indeed, as reported by Elliotte Friedman, he believes Salt Lake City will be very aggressive on the trade market, as well as the free agent market, right from the start.
The team already has a good core of young players, several draft picks and a ton of money available under the salary cap.
Friedman truly believes that the team’s new owner, Ryan Smith, will want to spend money.
It will be really interesting to follow the first actions of this new team, when we could be really surprised to see big free agents (Steven Stamkos?) take the road to Utah.
Incidentally, I wonder about the draft.
Will this team be drafted under the Arizona Coyotes name, or already under the new Salt Lake City team name?
We’ll have to wait and see.
What is certain is that Ryan Smith will have on hand a very good young team that we could already see emerging from its reconstruction very soon.
Clayton Keller, Dylan Guenther, Logan Cooley, Josh Doan and company will give the team a very good young base.
Imagine if they also added free agents.
In a gust
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