Episode 7: The Last Howl

As we’ve covered in the last month of this show, the bond between a team and its community can be sacred and profound. With an arena serving as a gathering place, fans from the community and even the world can come together to build relationships and memories that last a lifetime.

However, this week’s episode, sadly, is covering what happens when that bond is broken.

Now, what seems to get lost in headlines like this are the people that are affected by this. People will be out of jobs, local businesses will suffer, and the fans: the fans that have dealt with rebuild after rebuild, rumor after rumor of their team leaving, are now without the gathering place, that common thread that brought them all together.

This week, I spoke with four fans of the Coyotes to share their stories of this team: how it’s brought them together with loved ones, gave them a community to root for, and now, how do you support a burgeoning hockey community that’s now lost its team?

As a Connecticut native, I'm unfortunately familiar with the relocation experience for a fanbase. The scars of the Whalers departure are still very deep in the city almost 30 years later. However, there's still a glimmer of hope for the fans of the Whale deep beneath the scar tissue that the hockey community can still thrive here. I'm happy to see that the Phoenix community has chosen hope in the face of bitterness to still build their burgeoning hockey community up through multiple youth programs and their college team at ASU. I truly hope by the time the NHL does return to Arizona, the hockey community will be even stronger than it is now.