![]() ![]() ![]() However, they opted to move to Phoenix when they were unable to secure a lease for Minneapolis' Target Center. Paul, which had just lost the Minnesota North Stars in 1993. ![]() Gluckstern and Burke had initially planned to move the team to Minneapolis-St. After the franchise considered "Mustangs", "Outlaws", "Wranglers" and "Freeze", a name-the-team contest yielded the nickname " Coyotes", which finished ahead of the second-place "Scorpions". In December 1995, Jerry Colangelo, owner of the National Basketball Association's Phoenix Suns Phoenix businessmen Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke and a local investor group purchased the team with plans to move it to Phoenix for the 1996–97 season. Unfortunately, several attempts to keep the team in Winnipeg fell through. Despite strong fan support, owner Barry Shenkarow was forced to put the team on the market. It was over 40 years old and had no luxury suites. In addition, the club's home arena, Winnipeg Arena, was one of the smallest in the league seating just under 15,400 people. Winnipeg was the second-smallest market in the NHL for most of the Jets' existence and became the smallest after the Quebec Nordiques moved to Denver in 1995 to become the Colorado Avalanche. ![]() The Jets ran into financial trouble when player salaries began spiraling up in the 1990s this hit the Canadian teams particularly hard. The franchise would not win another playoff series for 25 years. Two seasons later, they dispatched the Flames in the first round, only to be swept again by the Oilers in the division finals. However, they were swept by the Oilers in the division finals. In 1984–85, for instance, they finished with the fourth-best record in the NHL with 96 points, at the time their best as an NHL team. Because of the way the playoffs were structured for much of their Winnipeg run, the team was all but assured of having to defeat either the Oilers or the Flames (or both) to reach the Conference Finals. But the Jets only won two playoff series, largely due to being in the same division as the powerful Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. However, they recovered fairly quickly, making the playoffs 11 times in the next 15 seasons. As a result, they finished last in the NHL during their first two seasons, including a nine-win season in 1980–81 that is still the worst in franchise history. The merger's terms allowed the established NHL teams to reclaim most of the players that had jumped to the upstart league, and the Jets lost most of their best players in the ensuing reclamation draft. However, the club was never able to translate its WHA success into the NHL after the merger. It then became one of the four teams admitted to the NHL as part of a merger when the financially struggling WHA folded in 1979. The Jets were the most successful team in the short-lived WHA, winning the Avco World Trophy, the league's championship trophy, three times and making the finals five out of the WHA's seven seasons. The team began play as the Winnipeg Jets, one of the founding franchises in the World Hockey Association (WHA). They were originally members of the WHA before joining the NHL in 1979. The franchise played in Winnipeg as the Jets from 1972 to 1996. As of 2023, they are the league's oldest NHL franchise to have never played in the Stanley Cup Finals.įranchise history Original Winnipeg Jets (1972–1996) Despite a difficult working relationship with the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, the Coyotes were able to secure a year-to-year arrangement to play in the facility until the end of the 2021–22 season. The NHL maintained control of the franchise until 2013 when they found new ownership willing to keep it in Arizona. The NHL took over the Phoenix Coyotes franchise in 2009, when then-owner Jerry Moyes gave up the team after filing for bankruptcy. The team was unstable under earlier ownership. Alex Meruelo became the majority owner on July 29, 2019. The franchise name changed to the Arizona Coyotes on June 27, 2014. The Jets moved to Phoenix on July 1, 1996, and were renamed the Phoenix Coyotes. They first played at America West Arena (now Footprint Center) in downtown Phoenix from 1996 to 2003 and then played at Glendale's Gila River Arena (now Desert Diamond Arena) from 2003 to 2022.įounded on December 27, 1971, as the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association (WHA), they were one of four franchises absorbed into the NHL after the WHA had ceased operations, joining on June 22, 1979. The Coyotes compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference and play at Mullett Arena in Tempe. The Arizona Coyotes are a professional ice hockey team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Process black, brick red, forest green, sand, sienna, purple ![]()
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