Today, the National Hockey League officially confirmed what had been rumoured all week. They have rendered the Arizona Coyotes franchise “inactive” and added a new franchise in Salt Lake City, Utah, to take their place starting in 2024-25. The new Utah franchise will be owned by the Smith Entertainment Group, led by Ryan and Ashley Smith.
As the Coyotes’ franchise will be inactive, they will transfer all of their existing hockey assets—including their full roster of players, future draft picks, reserve list, and Hockey Operations Department—to the new Utah franchise.
The league’s board of governors can reactivate the Coyotes if their owner, Alex Meruelo, completes a new, state-of-the-art facility appropriate for an NHL team within the next five years.
“As everyone knows, Utah is a vibrant and thriving state, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in the press release. “We are also delighted to welcome Ashley and Ryan Smith to the NHL family and know they will be great stewards of the game in Utah. We thank them for working so collaboratively with the League to resolve a complex situation in this unprecedented and beneficial way.”
The Arizona Coyotes logo, name, and history (Jets too?) will all remain with Meruelo. “I have negotiated the right to reactivate the team within the next five years,” he said in the release, “and have retained ownership of the beloved Coyotes name, brand and logo. I remain committed to this community and to building a first-class sports arena and entertainment district without seeking financial support from the public.”
WHAT WILL THE NEW UTAH NHL TEAM BE CALLED?
With the Coyotes franchise and the new Utah franchise being distinctly separate entities, this ensures we’ll see a new name and identity coming for Utah’s NHL team. When? Well, that might take a while. ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski today Tweeted that the team might not have a team name until the 2025-26 season, essentially playing nameless this fall.
A report by NHL trademark-spotter Clark Rasmussen on DetroitHockey.Net seems to back this up, as two nameless Utah brands including “Utah HC” and “Utah Hockey Club” were both trademarked recently (not necessarily by the team), among a small batch of other, fairly unexciting options:
Utah HC, Utah Hockey Club, Utah Blizzard, Utah Fury, Utah Venom
Yeah, it’s not the best initial list, if it’s even actually the team that’s trademarking these. (Maybe Utah HC is the best of the bunch for now.) See Clark’s post for way more information on these trademarks.
Utah team owner Ryan Smith basically confirmed this idea in a story on NHL.com.
“It will 100 percent be ‘Utah,’ and then it will be ‘Utah Something,’ obviously,” he said in the story. “I don’t think given this timeline that we’re going to have time — or nor should we rush with everything else that’s going on — to go force what that is in the next three months.”
The article also stated that Doubleday & Cartwright, a creative agency in Brooklyn, New York, will develop the new identity.
“They’ve done so many of these identities,” Smith said in the story. “They’re the best on the planet. They’re there to go run that process. I’m not going to rush them. Like, it’s really important that we’re not saying, ‘Hey, this has to be ready by the fall, especially when it’s going to be ‘Utah Something.’
“So, we’ll start with ‘Utah’ on the jersey, and we’ll figure out the logo and everything else and what it is that we are. But that’s a one-way door. You get to do it once. And with this timeline, I think both the League feels better and we feel better to just run the process, and then we’ll drop it when we drop it.”
So this could be the end of the NHL in Arizona, or it could simply be some time apart. Meruelo has until the 2029-30 season to get a shiny new, NHL-quality building up and running. In the meantime, this might be your last chance to score one of them sweet Kachina Coyotes jerseys.
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