Coyotes Relocation Stirs Ugly Seattle Sports Memories (Part 2 of 2)

A flight can get you from Winnipeg to Salt Lake City in about five hours. Or, you can make a 28-year layover in Phoenix, like the Arizona Coyotes did.

We now know that Jets 1.0, who became Coyotes 1.0 in 1996, will be unveiled shortly as Utah TBA. Two name changes, three arena homes, and never-ending uncertainty in the desert soon will be relegated to history.

Why This Sounds Familiar In Seattle

Seattle sports fans understand the pain. While they've embraced the NHL Kraken, wounds remain fresh from the relocation of the NBA Sonics in 2008.

Older fans even remember Puget Sound's first dalliance with Major League Baseball, though the Seattle Pilots left town after just one season in 1969.

As the Coyotes experienced more recently, the public in Seattle turned against the demands of Sonics owners and elected officials.

"The team played in the aging KeyArena, which lacked the luxury suites and other amenities that many other NBA arenas had," Fadeaway World recalled .

"The team's ownership group pushed for a new arena to be built, but the city of Seattle was unwilling to fund it with public money."

As Matt Caulkins noted in the Seattle Times . "The CliffsNotes of the CliffsNotes version is that Sonics owner Howard Schultz sold the team to Oklahoma City tycoon Clay Bennett, who moved the team to his native town after two years of drama that drained the emotions of Sonics die-hards."

Kraken Owners Have Paved Way For NBA's Return

Fans first got their hopes up for a replacement Sonics when hedge fund manager Chris Hansen proposed a new SoDo arena, near where taxpayers had funded stadiums for the Mariners and Seahawks.

Among the many reasons it never happened, "After voters weighed in, the city adopted limitations on public financing of sports facilities." ( Crosscut )

What broke the logjam was the NHL awarding a franchise to Seattle, once the league was satisfied companies would build them a new home on the Key Arena site without a public handout (well, not much of one, anyway).

"AEG, Hudson Pacific Properties and the Oak View Group, with the city's approval, footed the bill to renovate what is now Climate Pledge Arena for the Kraken, the WNBA Storm, and potentially, a new NBA team." ( Crosscut )

Pilots Had No Direction

If the Seattle Pilots are remembered at all, it's because of the greatest sports book ever written, "Ball Four," by then-Pilots pitcher Jim Bouton.

Seattle's one-season taste of Major League Baseball in 1969 was a beginning-to-end disaster; a ballpark one owner called a "pigsty," owners who were all hat and no cattle, and more lawsuits than fans.

Since 1970, the relocated team has been known as the Milwaukee Brewers.

A SABR.com story quoted historian Bill Mullins. “Owners had voted a franchise to a city without a major league stadium, in an area that had not pursued a team avidly, and with an ownership group that was, at best, financed by a penny-pincher.”

Postscript

The Mariners arrived in 1977 to play alongside the Seahawks in the Kingdome - a facility story of lengthy legal and political wrangling for another time.

As for Coyotes fans, they've been promised another NHL team at some unspecified future date. It hinges on plans by the now-teamless ownership group to build an arena.

Here's the kicker: owners of the ghost Coyotes franchise, who will retain a non-voting seat with the NHL Board of Governors, have promised said arena will be privately funded.