The NHL preseason is underway. The league made headlines by welcoming the Seattle Kraken as the 32nd team and its new television deal with Disney and WarnerMedia.
While those are good news for the league, a problem emerged in the offseason in Arizona. The city of Glendale kicked the Coyotes out of the Gila River Arena after 18 years. The team relocated from Winnipeg in the 1995-96 season, when the NHL was expanding south.
The NHL does not want to admit it, but the southern expansion has been a failure for the most part. The Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas in the 1992-93 season. It took Minnesota eight years before getting a new hockey team called the Wild.
After the failure of the Atlanta Thrashers, which was the NHL’s second stint in Atlanta, the team moved to Winnipeg which has been a home run for the NHL. Unfortunately for the NHL, it proved that the southern expansion from the mid-’90s was a failure.
The NHL, along with Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo, must figure out where the Coyotes should play next. Recently, the team submitted a bid to build a brand-new arena in Tempe. Soon, the Tempe staffers will look at the proposal.
Why are the NHL wasting time keeping the Coyotes in Arizona? Arizona was never a hockey town. The team has had poor attendance over the years, and the NHL doesn’t want to admit they made a mistake by relocating the original Jets to Arizona.
The NHL needs to admit this mistake and move the team to a place that hasn’t had a hockey team in 26 years. That city is Quebec, Canada. It is the second-largest city in the province behind Montreal and the seventh-largest in Canada.
The city used to have a team called the Quebec Nordiques which were in the Eastern Conference. The team played at the Colisée Pepsi Arena from 1972-95 before relocating to Colorado. Since the move, the Avalanche have won two Stanley Cup championships.
In recent years, Quebec built a brand-new arena called the Videotron Centre, an 18,259-seat arena that is located near the old Colisée Pepsi Arena. The arena was built in hopes of an NHL team relocating to Quebec.
Moving the Coyotes to Quebec would be an intelligent decision by the NHL and owner Alex Meruelo. Then, the NHL can fix its division by moving the team to the Eastern Conference’s Atlantic Division.
So, who moves to the Western Conference’s Central Division? Look no further than the Detroit Red Wings, who would be reunited with longtime rivals the Chicago Blackhawks. These two moves would not only get the NHL out of Arizona, but it would reunite some historic rivalries and return to a market that helped make the league.
The NHL needs to do the right thing and move the Coyotes to Quebec and bring back the Nordiques.
