You state the Coyotes “have been a prime candidate for relocation in the NHL for years.”
That's the current thinking, you are parroting. But why haven't the Coyotes been moved instead of allowing expansions in Seattle or Las Vegas? Ask your NHL Commissioner first before you take it up with me.
The Coyotes do not have a permanent home, yet, in Arizona. Again, I respectfully suggest, you ask your NHL Commissioner first before you take it up with me.
And I know why the Coyotes have not relocated, so I don’t need to ask NHL commissioner Gary Bettman about it. Since the mid-1990s the NHL’s business model has been built on establishing a presence in every major U.S. TV market — even if they have hardly any hockey fans. That’s why the original Winnipeg Jets were even allowed to relocate to Arizona in the first place.
Relocation has become a rare thing in the NHL for one simple reason. If there is a city out there with no NHL team that looks like a good destination for a franchise to relocate, the NHL would much rather put an expansion team there and collect a huge up-front expansion fee from the new team. The Seattle Kraken, for example, paid a $650 million expansion fee to join the NHL a couple of years ago. That money gets divided among the existing owners and goes right into their pockets.
So an NHL team will only relocate in a rare case where the team’s ownership situation is so precarious that the league has to intervene and get involved in managing or subsidizing the franchise. That’s exactly what happened to the Coyotes a few years ago.