Ice Hockey

4/22/2024 |  Utah's new NHL team left a Phoenix suburb millions in debt (AXIOS Sports) As the Arizona Coyotes decamp to Utah, the team's fraught history in the Phoenix area illustrates a pattern in big-league sports: A city can't get a team without public money, but taxpayer support is no guarantee they'll stay.
Why it matters: Salt Lake City is considering a sales tax hike to cover up to $1 billion in bonds for downtown renovations, including stadium space, for the new hockey team.

• The NHL on Thursday approved the Coyotes' sale to Ryan and Ashley Smith, who own the Utah Jazz. The renamed hockey team will play alongside the Jazz at the Delta Center.

4/22/2024 |  Tennessee St. Hires Duanté Abercrombie As First Ice Hockey Head Coach In HBCU History (First and Pen)

Last year, Tennessee State made history when it announced it was launching the first ice hockey team in HBCU sports history. This past week, Tennessee State University President Glenda Glover and Director of Athletics Dr. Mikki Allen made history again when they hired Duanté Abercrombie as the first head ice hockey coach in HBCU sports history.

“I am incredibly excited to embark on building this program, supported by God, my family, TSU students, alumni, and all those eagerly awaiting this moment,” said Abercrombie. “I firmly believe that one day, TSU will be recognized not only as a powerhouse on the ice but also as a program whose student-athletes leave a profound legacy on the world, enriched by the lessons learned at TSU.”

Abercrombie’s hiring adds a major piece to the Tennessee St. hockey program puzzle that began in the spring of 2021 when Allen began discussing the idea with Nashville Predators President and CEO, Sean Henry.

“We have tremendous partnerships with the NHL and Sean Henry and the Predators behind us 110%,” said Allen to the Tennessean when the announcement was first made in February 2022. “Now we are assembling a TSU Friends of Hockey Fundraising Team. We are looking for other corporations. It could be a private gift out there or a public gift that could really help ignite this and propel us to where this becomes a reality.“

Two years later, the Tigers have their leader.

According to William Douglas of The Color of Hockey, Abercrombie began playing hockey at the age of six with Washington’s Fort Dupont Ice Hockey Club. The organization, founded in 1978 by Neal Henderson, the first Black inductee of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, is “an affiliate of the NHL’s Hockey Is For Everyone initiative and the oldest minority-oriented youth hockey program in North America.”

Abercrombie then attended Hampton University, where he was a track and field athlete. After leaving the university, he played in the New Zealand Ice Hockey League (NZIHL) and the Federal Hockey League (FHL) in the U.S.

He then moved into coaching at the college level in 2019 at Stevenson University, an NCAA DIII program. Over the next few years, he became recognized for his work in the sport, including being named to The Athletic’s 40-Under-40 hockey list as an individual shaping the game’s future.

The Tigers’ new head coach has also contributed to the sport’s diversity efforts.

He was a guest coach for the San Jose Sharks 2023 training camp under head coach David Quinn and Mike Grier, who became the first Black general manager in NHL history when he was hired by the San Jose Sharks in June 2022.

He was also part of the Boston Bruins’ 2021-22 scouting mentorship program and while with the Arizona Coyotes’ “first-ever coaching internship program,” he was featured in ESPN’s “NHL Bound,” a four-part series that told the story of two Black hockey coaches pursuing their dream of working in the NHL.

Last season, Abercrombie worked with the coaching staff for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, including roles with the Leafs, the AHL affiliate Toronto Marlies and East Coast Hockey League affiliate, Newfoundland Growlers. There he learned about player scouting, analysis and development, preparing and executing practices and other coaching essentials.

These experiences are what made Abercrombie so attractive to Tennesse St.

“I knew after our first interaction that Duanté was the right person to lead the charge,” said Nick Guerriero, Director of Hockey and Assistant AD for Communications & Creative Content. “His understanding of HBCU culture, the collegiate hockey landscape, and the NHL will benefit our team tremendously. I’m thrilled to work with Coach Abercrombie as we develop TSU Hockey into a championship-caliber program.”

Now Abercrombie, a Washington D.C. native and inaugural member of the NHL Coaches’ Association’s BIPOC Coaches Program, will turn his attention to developing a program from scratch.

But he does have one player to build around. 

In January, forward Xavier Abel made history by transferring from Drury University to Tennessee State, making him both the program’s and HBCU athletic’s first hockey player in history. 

With the support of the department and the school, the Tigers’ history-making coach will have the backing he needs to make the once-dream of launching an HBCU ice hockey program a reality.

“With Duanté’s extensive experience in player development and coaching, I’m confident in his ability to build a reputable program, along with inspire our student-athletes to excel both on-and-off the ice,” said Allen. “We’re excited to embark on this groundbreaking journey together!”

4/22/2024 |  Phoenix’s NHL Future on Ice: Can Meruelo Reactivate the Coyotes? (Front Office Sports)

Former Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo is now officially on the clock to develop a new arena in the Phoenix area and revive the franchise rendered “inactive” by the NHL. But more local roadblocks could be impeding his progress toward that goal. 

In the wake of the Coyotes’ move to Utah, Meruelo and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman met last week with local Phoenix media. There, Bettman conveyed his long-held desire to succeed in what remains the No. 11 media market in the U.S. But the commissioner acknowledged there could be a repeat of the political opposition in Arizona that already has seen the Coyotes rejected in both Glendale and by voters last year in Tempe. 

“If there’s outright hostility to another arena, and there are forces at bay that are going to do everything to prevent it, that’ll be a problem,” Bettman said. “But I don’t doubt Alex’s commitment to try and deal with all of those head on.”

The complex, two-stage transaction in which Ryan Smith, owner of the NBA’s Jazz and two pro soccer teams, acquired the franchise contains a defined, five-year window during which Meruelo will have a chance to develop an arena and revive the Coyotes as an expansion team. Rather than stripping the Coyotes from Meruelo in totality, he gets a clear opportunity to “reactivate the franchise.” Bettman lauded the deal as a “scenario that I don’t think anybody’s ever done before.”

The Clock Is Ticking

But the answer on whether that will happen will almost certainly arrive much sooner. Meruelo must provide the NHL a minimum of 18 months’ notice to revive the franchise. More substantively, Meruelo said much of the franchise’s hopes are tied into a June 27 land auction, where he intends to secure a 110-acre parcel of state-owned land in north Phoenix, initially appraised at $68.5 million.

“The most important and critical thing we have to do now is win that land auction,” Meruelo said.

That land is designed to be part of a $3 billion arena and mixed-use development. A component of the project is premised on using the city’s credit rating to help finance the development, and imposing a sales tax on anything sold within the arena district, using a state law to create a special theme park district with taxing authority within it. As has been the case since the Tempe defeat last year, both the NHL and Meruelo are planning on proceeding without putting the project back in front of voters as a referendum.

“Referendums in sports are kind of tough,” Bettman said. “They generally don’t pass, we’ve learned. Kansas City, with the Super Bowl champions, just had a referendum fail. This project as currently outlined doesn’t require a referendum.”

Financial Matters

Meruelo spent $300 million for the Coyotes in 2019, but with the NHL paying $1 billion for the franchise in the transfer to Smith, that would suggest a $700 million profit, a tidy sum for the less than five years of ownership.

But industry sources tell Front Office Sports his true profit number is closer to $400 million when accounting for annual losses of at least $30 million, $20 million in improvements to Mullett Arena, and roughly $100 million in debt that was repaid as part of the recent transaction. Meruelo will be responsible for paying back $1 billion to the league as essentially an expansion fee should he succeed in reactivating the franchise. 

4/21/2024 |  Ryan Smith’s Ascension in Sports Ownership: Four Teams in Five Years (Front Office Sports)

Last week’s deal to take an NHL team out of Arizona and into Utah brought a resolution to one of the messiest franchise situations in the league. It also solidified Ryan Smith’s sports ownership portfolio as one of the fastest-growing in the country. Take a look at his last five years:

• 2020: Buys the NBA’s Utah Jazz for $1.66 billion
• 2022: Acquires MLS club Real Salt Lake with David Blitzer for roughly $400 million
• 2023: Revives the NWSL’s Utah Royals franchise for $2 million, again with Blitzer
• 2024: Purchases yet-to-be-renamed NHL team for $1.2 billion

“When these things come along, you don’t blink,” Smith said Friday during a press conference in Salt Lake City with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. The 45-year-old billionaire’s sports interests all fall under his company Smith Entertainment Group, which is already starting to stack up nicely against rival heavyweights in the industry, like Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (Rams, Nuggets, Avalanche, Rapids) and Fenway Sports Group (Red Sox, Penguins, Liverpool).

Money Well Spent

In 2002, Smith co-founded the software technology outfit Qualtrics with his brother, father, and one other business partner. That company sold in 2019 for $8 billion, and Smith wasted no time turning his attention to sports, buying the Jazz less than 24 months later.

Smith spent at least $3 billion for his share of the four sports teams he owns all or part of, and already they’re worth roughly $5.5 billion (based on Forbes’s valuations for the Jazz and Real Salt Lake, and recent comparable team sales within the NWSL).

Could There Be More?

Salt Lake City has been talked about as a potential option for MLB expansion, and the city was considered as a temporary landing spot for the A’s before they settled on playing in Sacramento while they wait for a ballpark to be built in Las Vegas. The WNBA is expanding too, but last week Smith admitted he “has a full plate right now,” even though he’s a fan of the W and speaks with commissioner Cathy Englebert often.

4/18/2024 |  League approves Coyotes sale and new franchise in Utah (Reuters Sports) April 18 (Reuters) - The National Hockey League's Board of Governors have approved the sale and relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Utah starting with the 2024-25 season, the league said on Thursday.
The deal includes a clause that could ultimately see Arizona get an expansion team if a state-of-the-art facility appropriate for an NHL team is constructed within five years.
The Utah team will be owned and controlled by Smith Entertainment Group -- the parent company of the NBA's Utah Jazz -- which is led by Ryan and Ashley Smith.