Arizona Coyotes: Bill Daly Confident In Team's Arena Search
Arizona Coyotes fans and NHL fans around the league continue to wait for news on the team’s arena search which has been teased throughout 2016. Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly is confident that a location will be secured in the greater Phoenix area.
Who are the Arizona Coyotes without a little arena speculation?
It’s become such a regular part of being a fan of this organization that when a location is finally announced and shovels are in the dirt, we may not know what to do with ourselves.
As we inch closer to the start of the 2016-17 NHL regular season, however, IceArizona remains silent on news that Anthony LeBlanc has been teasing throughout 2016.
The lack of updates or “hard evidence” set against what were likely dates suggested by Mr. LeBlanc have caused a subset of the fan base to return to panic mode. That has intensified as we’ve watched Quebec’s continued attempts to secure a franchise.
Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly brushed away concerns about the NHL’s long term plans for the Coyotes.
Craig Custance wrote that Daly “didn’t leave even a sliver of hope when asked about the Arizona Coyotes’ arena situation” resulting in a Quebec move.
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“Ultimately, they’ll find a long-term arena in the Phoenix area,” Daly said.
Everyone can step back from the ledge. Again.
Though Anthony LeBlanc might have been overly ambitious with his pronouncement of when arena news would be arriving throughout the year, he hasn’t exactly misled fans.
The IceArizona ownership group has repeatedly stated that they will remain in Arizona, and the small trickling of news we’ve gotten has implied that is the case.
Securing the signatures of Alex Goligoski, Jamie McGinn, and the extension of Head Coach Dave Tippett imply that they are comfortable with what they’ve heard, as well.
In June, LeBlanc announced the team had selected a site.
“We have made some significant progress in the last several weeks and we are down to the point where we have selected a site,” LeBlanc told reporters at the team’s NHL Draft headquarters. “We’re not at liberty to disclose the site at this point, but we are moving forward and are actually in the process of trading legal documentation between us and the organizations that we’re working with. We anticipate getting that done over the next several weeks.”
Just before the Arizona Coyotes’ announcement, Phoenix Business Journal suggested that the Yotes “may be landing at a former drive-in movie theater on the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community across from Scottsdale’s Big Surf water park.”
So we wait. Again.
The last word out of ownership was that they anticipated having an announcement before the end of summer.
Fall begins on September 22nd.
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