Arizona Coyotes players have been informed the NHL club is expected to relocate to Salt Lake City, a person with knowledge of the meeting said Friday night.
General manager Bill Armstrong flew to Edmonton, Alberta, to tell players about the team’s potential move to Utah before its game against the Oilers, the person told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced.
Players and officials could visit Salt Lake City next week, possibly as soon as after the season finale Wednesday, which could be the final game at 5,000-seat Mullett Arena in Tempe.
Coyotes players were not available following Friday night's 3-2 overtime win over Edmonton and coach Andre Tourigny said he would only take questions about the game.
“This team has been through a lot of adversity," Tourigny said. “The first time the rumor came around, we didn't manage it well and we shoot ourselves in the foot, went on a 14-game losing streak. Our guys are showing how proud they are, how much they care for each other and how much they want to have success with each other. It's cool to feel that, cool to see them cheering each other and pushing in the same direction like that.”
The news comes amid buzz that Ryan Smith, owner of the NBA's Utah Jazz, has been working to acquire an NHL team, a move that could include the league buying the Coyotes from Alex Meruelo and flipping it. Smith earlier this week solicited name ideas for a possible team in Salt Lake City, and the league has been working on two different drafts of the 2024-25 schedule based on whether the franchise is playing in Arizona or Utah.
The Smith Entertainment Group in January said was interested in bringing a hockey team to Salt Lake City and had the immediate ability to facilitate that. The team would play in the Delta Center until a new arena could be built. That announcement included the request to initiate an expansion process.
But it also was conspicuously timed near the midway point of the season and without a long-term home for the Coyotes in Arizona. Last year, an arena referendum in Tempe failed, and in recent weeks the team said it was committed to winning a land auction for a potential arena site in Phoenix.
Even if that auction succeeds, it could lead the NHL back to the desert later this decade. NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh had repeatedly expressed concerns about the current situation, playing in a small arena on Arizona State's campus, which was one possible home for the team until a new building was constructed.
Now the team is likely headed to its third location since joining the league from the World Hockey Association in 1979. Originally the Winnipeg Jets, the club was sold to a Phoenix-area ownership group led by the Suns’ Jerry Colangelo in 1996, moved to Arizona and was rebranded as the Coyotes.
That group sold them in 2001 to developer Steve Ellman, with Wayne Gretzky part of the ownership group and head of hockey operations. The Coyotes in 2003 moved from Phoenix to nearby Glendale.
After incurring major financial difficulties, Ellman sold to trucking magnate Jerry Moyes in 2005. The trouble continued for several years, and the NHL went from paying the team’s bills to assuming operational control of the organization in 2008.
Moyes put the team into bankruptcy and was stripped of his remaining ownership after word emerged he intended to sell to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie of Blackberry fame, who planned to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario. After bankruptcy litigation and multiple failed bids to buy the team over several years, a group of Canadian businessmen took over in 2013.
By 2014, that group agreed to sell controlling interest to Philadelphia hedge fund manager Andrew Barroway, who bought out the rest of the shares of the team in 2017. Meruelo bought controlling interest from Barroway in 2019 and has owned the team since before the sale to Smith Entertainment Group.
Officials from Salt Lake City, Utah and the city’s 2034 Olympic bid supported Smith’s attempt to bring hockey to the state.
“Utah has a long history with hockey, the strongest economy in the nation, a passionate sports fanbase, and the youngest and most active population,” governor Spencer Cox said in January. “These factors make Utah ripe for the expansion of our sports and entertainment community.”
Smith said he and his group were “100% focused on making this happen as soon as possible.” It appears now to be happening for the 2024-25 NHL season.
Salt Lake City gets the Coyotes over other options, such as Houston, which was speculated as a relocation possibility since the league announced in 2018 they’d be shifting to the Central Division in 2021 with the addition of the expansion Seattle Kraken. The success of the Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights, who won the Stanley Cup last year in their sixth season of existence, has provided optimism about another hockey market in the western U.S.
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Arizona Coyotes goaltender Karel Vejmelka looks down during the third period of the team's NHL hockey game against the Seattle Kraken, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Coyotes players informed the team is expected to move to Salt Lake City, AP source says
FILE - The marquee in front of the Energy Solutions Arena, formerly the Delta Center, home of the Utah Jazz, shows conflicting signage at dusk before a game against the Toronto Raptors, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006, in Salt Lake City. Preparations are being made in case an NHL team is in Salt Lake City sooner than later. Prospective owner Ryan Smith earlier this week solicited public suggestions for a team name. All this comes as the Arizona Coyotes are hoping to win a land auction for a site to build a new arena in the city of Phoenix. (AP Photo/Steve C. Wilson, File)
Coyotes players informed the team is expected to move to Salt Lake City, AP source says
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa's election will determine how weary the country has become of the ruling African National Congress party that has been in power since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule 30 years ago.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC are struggling to keep their parliamentary majority and opinion polls predict that the party will likely receive less than 50% of the national vote for the first time in the May 29 election.
That doesn't mean that the beleaguered ANC will be out of power in Africa's most advanced economy.
Even as the famous organization once led by Nelson Mandela has seen a decline in its popularity, no one has risen to a position to replace it. Instead, South Africans who have turned away from the ANC have gone looking for answers among an array of opposition parties.
So, the ANC is still expected to gain the largest share of votes. But without an outright majority, it would need to form a coalition to stay in government and keep Ramaphosa for a second and final term as president. For a key country on the African continent, that might bring new complications, given some recent coalitions at local level have been spectacular failures.
While most South Africans appear ready to register their disgruntlement with the ANC in a defining moment, a coalition government may not easily solve the country's big problems, which include the world’s highest levels of unemployment and inequality.
South Africans don't vote directly for their president, but rather decide the makeup of Parliament, which is called the National Assembly. They do that by choosing parties and those parties get seats in Parliament according to their share of the national vote. The 400-member National Assembly then elects the president, meaning whichever party has a majority chooses the head of state.
That has always been the ANC since the first all-race elections in 1994, but this time it may need to strike agreements with other parties to get the required 201 votes from lawmakers to reelect the 71-year-old Ramaphosa and form a government.
The election effectively starts on Friday and Saturday, when South African citizens living overseas vote in embassies and foreign missions. The main election will be held on May 29 across all nine provinces. It will decide the makeup of both the national and provincial legislatures.
Just over 27 million of the population of 62 million are registered to vote in what is only the country's seventh fully democratic national election since apartheid was dismantled.
There are 70 political parties registered for the vote, the most ever, and independent candidates will be allowed to stand for the first time.
The ANC's fate is the headline story: Ramaphosa is the party's leader and the face of its campaign. The main opposition is the centrist Democratic Alliance, or DA. It has entered into an agreement with some smaller parties in the hope that their combined vote might force the ANC out of government completely. Polls indicate they are some way off that mark.
The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, or EFF, is the third biggest party and led by Julius Malema, a fiery former ANC youth leader.
The DA won around 20% in the last national election and the EFF 10% to the ANC's 57.5%. Neither opposition party appears to have significantly increased in popularity.
That's largely because of the dozens of other parties, many of them new, that have captured small shares. While 80% of South Africa’s population is Black, it is a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, with five defined racial groups, many ethnicities and 12 official languages. An equally diverse political picture is beginning to appear.
Of the new parties, uMkhonto weSizwe (which means Spear of the Nation) has gained the most attention because it is led by former South African President Jacob Zuma, who has turned his back on the ANC he once led in a bitter battle with Ramaphosa, the man who replaced him.
Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people. While South Africa is regarded as Africa's most advanced country, its contradictions are stark. It also has an unemployment rate of 32% — the highest in the world — and more than half of South Africans are living in poverty, according to the World Bank.
That has driven most of the discontent as millions of the poor Black majority feel the ANC has not improved their lives sufficiently three decades after apartheid, which brutally oppressed Black people in favor of the white minority.
Other prominent election issues that are seen as pushing voters away from the ANC are the high rate of violent crime, multiple government corruption scandals over the years, the failure of some basic government services and a crisis within the state-owned electricity supplier that has led to nationwide blackouts at regular intervals to conserve power. The blackouts have eased ahead of the election but they angered people and further damaged a struggling economy.
This story has been corrected to show the ANC won 57.5% of the vote in the last national election, not 62%.
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
FILE - Cars travel on a normally well-lit section of a freeway during a power outage in Johannesburg on Sept. 21, 2022. Power shortages, unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)
File — Residents of the township of Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, queue for water Saturday, March 16, 2024. Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people in the country as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
File — A young girl carrying an empty water bottle through a flooded street caused by an overflowing water reservoir in Hammanskraal, Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, May 26, 2023 during a cholera outbreak. Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people in the country as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe,File)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
