Portland was a possibility for Coyotes?

By foxsports
Published

July 12, 2013

First, let's get this out of the way: The Coyotes are staying in Glendale. Prospective ownership group Renaissance Sports and Entertainment signed a 15-year, $225 million lease deal for Jobing.com Arena this week after the Glendale City Council approved it in a contentious 4-3 vote on July 2, so all that remains at this point is official approval from the NHL's Board of Governors, which should be a formality.

But going back to the days leading up to the vote, there was much speculation about what would happen in the event of the council rejecting the deal. While Quebec has been oft-cited as a relocation possibility (for multiple franchises), most analysts believed Seattle would be the fallback option, and a CBC report in the days leading up to the vote said the NHL had agreed to a backup deal with a group that would have moved the team there to play in Key Arena until a new, hockey-suitable arena was built.

But a report published Friday indicated that there was also another city in play: Portland. The following excerpt is from Comcast SportsNet Northwest's Dwight Jaynes:

According to a highly placed Portland Trail Blazer source, the Blazers were closely monitoring the (Coyotes') situation, had been in discussions with the NHL and were ready to make an offer for the franchise in order to move it to Portland's Rose Garden, if the lease in Glendale didn't work out. The interest by the Blazers was considered serious, by the team and the NHL, with much time spent on financial analysis and projections. It is believed the team could consolidate several of its operations to serve both basketball and hockey while adding another full-time tenant for the arena.

It's worth mentioning that while one of the concerns surrounding Seattle was the suitability of Key Arena to host hockey, even for just a few years, the Rose Garden hosts the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League and seats about 5,000 more people in that configuration than the reconfigured Key Arena would have. So if the NHL weren't 100 percent sold on Seattle's short-term viability, it's very possible that Portland would have come into the equation.

Fortunately, this is all moot (at least as far as Coyotes fans are concerned) now that the deal in Glendale has been signed, sealed, delivered, etc. And with that in mind, happy Friday.

-- Matt Swartz