AHL's Roadrunners leaving Tucson not a given; ownership suggests Tempe, Southern Arizona sharing team

On the ice, the Roadrunners finish up their regular season this weekend at Tucson Arena while they prepare to open play in the 2024 Calder Cup Playoffs at home starting Wednesday.

Off the ice, and geographically away from Tucson itself, Meruelo said Friday at a press conference in Phoenix that “we’re talking about, of course, bringing the Roadrunners to Mullett” Arena on ASU’s Tempe campus.

“This is very early in the process so I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Meruelo said Friday, flanked to his left by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman as the pair discussed this week’s sale of the hockey operations elements of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, and the future of the sport in the state.

“We’ve talked about maybe half the season in Tucson, half the season in (Tempe),” Meruelo added. “There’s a lot of discussions going on. There is no commitment from anybody right now.”

With Meruelo as owner of the Coyotes, the sub-5,000-seat Mullett Arena served as the team’s home ice the last two seasons before a $1.2 billion deal finalized Thursday sent the NHL club’s players and hockey operations units to new ownership in Salt Lake City; as part of the deal, Meruelo retained other assets including the Coyotes name, logos, trademarks and the team’s business departments.

He also retained ownership of the Roadrunners, who have called Tucson Arena home since 2016 and are slated to remain the AHL affiliate of the new Utah-based NHL team.

Meruelo has been given a five-year window by the NHL to get a new multi-billion-dollar facility built in the greater-Phoenix area; if he does it, the NHL says it will give him an expansion franchise.

But it’s clear Meruelo believes having professional hockey in the Phoenix area in some form in the near future will help his long-term efforts to have an NHL team back in the Valley.

“We don’t have any agreements from ASU, and right now we haven’t spoken to the people from Tucson,” he said. “But we have different ideas. We just want to make sure that we continue to have hockey thrive in the desert.”

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman added that a Roadrunners “relocation from Tucson” would also need approval by the AHL’s board of governors.

“So far we’re very happy in Tucson and the Roadrunners have done very well this year — I think we’re in second place or first place, and we’re very excited about the team and the future,” Meruelo said. “But we haven’t yet decided where we are going to go. So I think we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.”

Meruelo said Thursday during a radio interview on Phoenix-based Arizona Sports 98.7-FM that he intends to move the Roadrunners to the Phoenix area, saying, “we’re gonna move them up to Mullett.”

The Roadrunners’ 10-year Tucson Arena lease includes a provision that may allow the team to play up to five “home games” at other facilities, although the rationale given in the lease is to “ensure the Arena is available for use of the annual Gem Show.”

A Roadrunners move to Tempe poses a number of logistical questions, including what ownership might owe the City of Tucson to break that lease two years early; believed to be north of $3 million, that amount would likely be a combination of rent as well as a prorated payback of money spent to renovate the arena to bring it to AHL standards.

It's also still not yet known to what degree ASU has an interest in the Roadrunners sharing a facility with their NCAA program and other events.

One possible quagmire there: the AHL’s westernmost teams tend to play a college-style, weekend-centric schedule. While NCAA hockey teams like ASU play a significant number of Friday- and Saturday-night games, so historically have the Roadrunners and their chief rivals.

Reached for comment Friday, Roadrunners officials in Tucson provided the Star the following statement: “To echo our owner Alex Meruelo’s comments earlier today, we’re very happy in Tucson and our focus this weekend is celebrating our fans with two wins during the final two games of the regular season. We look forward to beginning a long playoff run with the Tucson Arena Whiteout on Wednesday and winning a championship with the Tucson community by our side.”

The Roadrunners entered the weekend in second place in the AHL’s Pacific Division, having already secured home-ice advantage for the entirety of the upcoming playoff tree’s first round. A pair of wins against the San Jose Barracuda on Friday and Saturday nights could secure a more traditional home-ice advantage for the second round as well.

Reports first surfaced more than a week ago that, should the NHL ultimately depart the Phoenix market — which it did — Meruelo had plans to bring the Roadrunners to Tempe. City of Tucson spokesperson Andy Squire told the Star at that time that “at this point, nothing has trickled down to (the city or Tucson Convention Center) that would give us any information that has the Roadrunners relocating.”

Fletcher McCusker, chair of the Rio Nuevo board, which played a key role in bringing the Roadrunners to Tucson in 2016, told the Star last week that “it would be a loss to the (Tucson Convention Center)” to see the Roadrunners leave.

“We’ve invested millions of dollars in new ice and new locker rooms and facilities for the Roadrunners,” McClusker “I believe if they were to do that … we’d be very interested in replacing that team with another hockey team, given that we have these facilities, the fan experience (and) new ice.

As for Mullett Arena, ASU opened the Tempe facility in 2022 to house its NCAA Division I hockey program. The NHL’s Coyotes played at Mullett — by far the smallest facility among the NHL’s 32 teams — the last two seasons while Meruelo has attempted to secure land at multiple locations elsewhere in the Valley with the plan to build an NHL-caliber arena and arena and entertainment district to permanently house the Coyotes.

The Coyotes left their prior home in Glendale, currently named Desert Diamond Arena, after the 2021-22 season.