The Phoenix Coyotes are a professional ice hockey team that is based in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona. Since December 2003, the Coyotes have played their home games at Jobing.com Arena after having spent the previous 7½ seasons at America West Arena (now US Airways Center) in downtown Phoenix.
The Coyotes were founded in 1972 as the original Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association (WHA) and were one of four franchises absorbed into the NHL when the WHA folded in 1979. The team moved to Phoenix on July 1, 1996.
The NHL has owned the Phoenix Coyotes franchise since 2009. Former owner Jerry Moyes had incurred massive financial losses since his purchase of the team in 2005 and later turned it over to the league after declaring bankruptcy. Moyes had previously attempted to privately sell the team to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, who wanted to relocate the team to Hamilton, Ontario (who had unsuccessfully tried to buy and move at least three other NHL franchises). However, the NHL protested that the attempted sale was a violation of league policy and a court agreed. The league has resisted selling the team to interests that would have moved the team (True North Sports and Entertainment's bid, which would have returned the team to Winnipeg, was rejected, leading the group to buy the Atlanta Thrashers instead), but the loss of financial subsidies from the city of Glendale and relatively low attendance figures have posed as a threat to the team's long-term viability in Arizona.
On May 7, 2012, the Coyotes defeated the Nashville Predators in 5 games to advance to the Conference Finals for the first time since the team's inception. They later lost in five games to the eventual champion Los Angeles Kings.
Read more about Phoenix Coyotes: Jerseys, Mascot, Season-by-season Record
Famous quotes containing the words phoenix and/or coyotes:
“And there’s a score of duchesses, surpassing womankind,
Or who have found a painter to make them so for pay
And smooth out stain and blemish with the elegance of his mind:
I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)