Getty Dylan Guenther celebrates a goal with other Arizona Coyotes players
Just a few hours after Heavy documented the first step toward Salt Lake City landing an NHL franchise on April 10, reports started to emerge furiously pointing toward the imminent relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to the State of Utah as soon as in time for next season.
Coincidentally, the Coyotes were scheduled to face one of the strongest Stanley Cup contenders this season, the Vancouver Canucks, a few hours later on the April 10 slate of games.
And if the owners of the Coyotes were locked into moving the franchise away from Arizona, Dylan Guenther had more than a few reasons (four, precisely) for them to reconsider such a decision.
HUGE 4-point night for Dylan Guenther on his 21st birthday and the Yotes get the OT win 🔥
Dylan Guenther finished with 4 points on the day he turned 21 and he helped his team get a 4-3 overtime win over the Pacific Divison leader Vancouver.
Logan Cooley scored the game-winning goal with a little over a minute left in the extra period, assisted by Guenther. The latter scored a goal and dished out three assists, including that OT dime, in the win at Rogers Arena on Wednesday.
“Impressive, that’s the word I have,” head coach Andre Tourigny told reporters after the game on April 10. “They battled, they fought on the bench, the attitude, the desire to win, the pushing each other, the focus, that was really good. It’s fun to see our team play like that.”
The Coyotes, for what’s worth, didn’t make Guenther available to the media after the game, according to beat reporter Jeff Paterson.
The Coyotes Could Be Playing One Last Time In Arizona
The Coyotes have not been able to find a proper home since their former owner took the franchise into bankruptcy in 2009. Their current venue, the 4,600-seat Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University, is most definitely not what you think of when you think about an NHL-ready stadium.
As first reported by Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff and later confirmed by ESPN’s Greg Wyshinski and Emily Kaplan, the NHL has prepared a contingency plan that would involve relocating the Arizona Coyotes to Utah as soon as next season.
Emma Lingan of Heavy Sports covered the breaking news on April 10, and NHL insiders Chris Johnston and Pierre LeBrun added new information to the ongoing saga in a story published late on Wednesday, April 10 on The Athletic.
Committed to keeping Coyotes Hockey in the desert & building an arena in Phoenix.
“The NHL is positioning itself to potentially relocate the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City in time for the 2024–25 season, and updated its board of governors on the situation with a status-report memo Wednesday, according to multiple sources who read the memo,” the authors wrote. “No decisions had been finalized.”
Although the insiders warned readers and fans about not jumping to sudden conclusions, quoting multiple league sources “cautioning against framing relocation to Utah as a done deal,” they also revealed that the same sources confirmed “those discussions are happening.”
The Coyotes will host their final game of the 2024 regular season on April 17 when they will play a matchup against the Edmonton Oilers. There is a chance that could be the final game the Coyotes, as we know them, play in Arizona before moving to Utah and Salt Lake City.
Dylan Guenther Scored 4 Points On His 21st Birthday in the Coyotes Win
Guenther is playing NHL hockey for the second season this year after getting drafted by the Coyotes with the No. 9 pick in 2021. He appeared in 33 games last season with Arizona and he’s logged 42 appearances this season with the team.
Throughout his career, spanning 75 games, he’s scored 21 goals and 25 assists. That said, his numbers this season nearly make up for all of that production as he’s tallied 15 goals and 16 assists this year alone.
WATCH: All FOUR of Dylan Guenther’s points in the Yotes’ 4-3 OT win.
More impressively, Guenther’s performance on April 10 marked his first game with more than 3 points and his first outing with more than 2 assists in a single game. Guenther logged 21:29 TOI, also a career-high figure, through 24 shifts.
The Coyotes (34-40-5) have already been eliminated from playoff contention although the team is a class above the true bottom dwellers of the NHL with 73 points in 79 games, nearly 30 points above NHL-worst San Jose’s 45-point tally.