The year is 2014 and Lindsey Ellis is an American Collegiate Hockey Association National (ACHA) champion playing for the Miami of Ohio women’s club hockey team. The team capped off its champion-titled season with a 30-2-3 record.
Now, a decade later, the Arizona native returned to her roots and has the Arizona State University women’s club hockey team on the hunt for its third-straight appearance at the ACHA National Tournament.
During the ASU women’s club hockey team’s inaugural season in 2015-16, female hockey players accounted for roughly 7% of the total registered skaters in Arizona, according to USA Hockey registration reports. Now, that figure has grown to 10%, leading to a 437-skater increase in a near decade. Reflecting on this progress, Ellis said being successful at the college level opened her eyes to the many opportunities that women were missing in her home state.
“That’s kind of the main reason why I wanted to come back and start this year,” Ellis said, the head coach of the Sun Devils. “Hopefully, one day, it’ll evolve into something like the men have. It all started with just the idea that there needs to be more opportunities for women out here.”
Related: The State of Hockey in Arizona Following Coyotes Departure
Women’s hockey in Arizona, even hockey in general, may have not been a possibility without the Winnipeg Jets relocating to the Grand Canyon State in 1996, becoming the Phoenix Coyotes.
For broadcaster Jody Jackson, who has broadcasted professional sports in Arizona since 2000, looking back on the introduction of hockey came with extra practice for the broadcast team in terms of vocabulary.
“It was a very new hockey market,” Jackson said, adding that when she first joined the broadcast, the producers would talk about what vocabulary to use. “I remember one thing that I did with Tyson Nash, where he actually would demonstrate on me some of these penalties. So, like, cross-checking is this,” she said as she made the cross-checking motion.
In short, Arizona’s NHL franchise lasted 28 seasons, with its last in 2023-24. Through poor management, on-ice struggles and lack of financial gain, the Coyotes always seemed to be in “quicksand” according to Todd Walsh, a long-time Arizona sports broadcaster who worked alongside Jackson on the Coyotes’ pre and post-game shows.
On April 18, 2024, the NHL approved the Coyotes’ move to Salt Lake City, Utah. Currently in its inaugural season, the Utah Hockey Club is the newest addition to the NHL. Although the desert may have lost its professional hockey team, the Coyotes have left their mark on Arizona’s hockey community.
Growth in Hockey
Current Arizona High School Hockey Association (AHSHA) president Kenny McGinley said he was fortunate to be born right in the sweet spot of hockey in Arizona.
“I was three years old when the Coyotes started here, and so there was so much craze and excitement for a new sport, new franchise and I became just obsessed with the game,” McGinley said. “I don’t think I missed many of their games the first few years. That’s also when all the new rinks, or all the rinks in the valley, were built. And so there’s just a huge boom of hockey.”
In a decade from 2012-13 to 2022-23, Arizona almost doubled its total registered skaters from 4,125 to 9,716, according to USA Hockey registration reports. From 2013 to 2018, the Coyotes donated over 2,000 sets of hockey equipment, $300,000 to local rinks and more than 12,000 hockey jerseys in Arizona. Furthermore, with the Coyotes in town, the NHL donated $500,000 annually through its Industry Growth Fund.
“It was really growing,” Jackson said about the sport’s growth in the desert. “And this is where I get sad, because it was still just scratching the surface. I think of what it could have been.”
Looking at ASU alone, it currently houses three men’s ACHA clubs and a men’s NCAA DI hockey team. The Sun Devils’ current coach, Greg Powers, also returned to his roots after playing goalie for ASU’s club hockey team from 1995 to 1999 and started coaching in 2010.
Under his leadership, Powers won ASU an ACHA DI National Championship. The program now sits at the NCAA DI level in its first season in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC). On Nov. 22, 2024, he picked up his 300th coaching career win amid the team’s historic sweep over the reigning national champions, the Denver Pioneers.
“We’re the show in town now,” Powers said at his team’s season-opening press conference on Sept. 24, 2024. “The biggest impact we can make is off the ice, in the community. We’ve done things like a free coaches clinic for youth and high school coaches. The guys have been out in the community in the last month and a half more than probably the past year. We’re going to continue to do those things and really reach out to the youth hockey community and open our arms to them.”
The connection between ASU and the Coyotes? Mullett Arena in Tempe. In January 2021, an agreement between the school and the Coyotes had a 5,000-seat, multi-purpose venue constructed with the main goal of giving the Coyotes a temporary house and a lifelong home at ASU. The Mullett opened its doors in October 2022. Son of former Coyotes’ long-time captain Shane Doan, Josh Doan, scored the first collegiate goal at the arena playing for the Sun Devils.
On the women’s side, Ellis launched the ASU women’s club hockey team in 2015 and played its first season in 2016. The Sun Devils experienced recent success, making the ACHA National Tournament the past two seasons. Furthermore, the team won its first game at nationals last season.
“It’s like night and day from nine years ago,” Ellis said on the growth of her program. “The way we coach is different. We’ve had great mentors that we’ve learned from through the years. The type of player we have here now is completely different than we had nine years ago. I think that development will continue to grow for us.”
Before Mullet Arena was built, all of ASU’s hockey teams played at an aging Oceanside Arena in Tempe. The Mountain America Community Iceplex, which is connected to the Mullett, was built months after Mullett Arena was constructed. ASU’s men’s and women’s ACHA club teams now call it home.
Another growing channel of hockey is youth girls’ hockey. In particular, former U.S. Olympian, the first Arizona-born hockey player to play at the Olympic stage and female hockey player, Lyndsey Fry, is attempting to hold youth hockey together.
“She’s keeping youth hockey going for boys and for girls,” Jackson said. “I’m just so glad to see that she’s continuing on with that initiative, and it’s thriving.”
Fry and Matt Shott helped bring the Arizona Kachinas girls hockey team to life in 2019. The program made strides, producing three players on the ASU women’s hockey club team.
Sophie Fausel, a former Kachinas player and current player on ASU’s women’s club hockey team, said a lot of the younger Kachinas look up to them.
“They see that a lot of us have gone to the collegiate level and have gone NCAA DI, DII, DII and even ACHA DI,” the sophomore said. “They see that we’re now playing ACHA DI and even at 12- and 14-years-old they see that. It gives them just that much more motivation to work for that.”
Therefore, the expansion of the Sun Devils’ hockey program can be linked to Mullett Arena and the Mountain America Community Iceplex, which wouldn’t be possible without the Coyotes.
The high school level is also benefiting from Mullett Arena. McGinley has made sure to host the past two state championships for AHSHA at the Mullett and claims that they have sold 2,500 tickets in each of the past two state finals and hopes to raise attendance levels for this year.
McGinley said the growth of high school hockey since joining the AHSHA board in 2014 is more players, more teams and a greater footprint in the state.
“As far as divisional structure, we had the same four divisions back then as well (three levels of varsity and one junior varsity),” McGinley said. “I would guess we were about 500 players in 2014, probably in the range of like 27 to 28 teams, whereas now we’re at 41 teams and 780 players.”
The Coyotes Serving as an Inspiration to Many
For some, the Coyotes will be remembered for their 2012 West Conference Final run. Arizona fell in overtime in Game 5 to the eventual Stanley Cup champions that year, the Los Angeles Kings. This was the furthest Arizona had made it toward a Stanley Cup berth in its nearly three-decade existence.
For Jackson, doing the postgame outside at Gila River Arena was “just wild.”
“Kind of funny that my favorite memories, besides the on-ice play, were outside with the crowd. And it was a fun time, beating some of the elite teams. I remember the rivalry with the Detroit Red Wings and everything that went on there. And sadly, it ended with LA winning that series. And you think what could have been.”
Ellis and a majority of her coaching staff who are Arizona natives as well, would probably not be involved in the hockey world if it weren’t for the Coyotes.
“When they moved here in ’96 I remember pictures of me and my brother at America West Arena back in the day. I know Lyndsey Fry can say the same. I know Kenzie [Pavlack] (an assistant coach on the team) can say the same. I think there’s a lot of people here that hockey in Arizona wouldn’t be what it is without the Coyotes.”
Fausel, an Arizona-born and raised hockey player, said it was amazing to have professional Arizona hockey players as role models.
“Especially, even with little boys wanting to play. They have their favorite player in the NHL, they live here, that’s awesome,” Fausel said. “Especially even me, growing up my 14U year, my favorite player was Nick Schmaltz and still is to this day, and so sad to see him leave: I looked up to him. I have a couple of his sticks and it made me want to play more because I knew they were here but I still watch them on TV.”
Even AHSHA’s president, McGinley, wonders where he would be without the Coyotes.
“Myself included, probably would have not played hockey growing up, or certainly to the level or amount that I did without the Coyotes being there,” McGinley said. “That’s the case for 99% of the kids in our state who play throughout all the ownership changes and the adversity that is well documented. Their involvement in youth hockey has fluctuated throughout the years. They helped us at a pivotal point, many years ago. We were able to apply for the NHL’s Industry Growth Fund from them, where we were able to get some dollars towards lead growth and programming stuff like that.”
Hockey in the Desert Without the Coyotes
At the moment, the Utah Hockey Club’s American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate team, the Tucson Roadrunners, is still in the desert for the time being. The team’s lease with the Tucson Convention Center, its home arena, ends in 2027. However, over the past two seasons, the Roadrunners have posted below-average AHL attendance ratings. After selling the Coyotes, the Roadrunners owner, Alex Meruelo, may look to move his chips again to potentially make more profit.
Jackson will miss her so-called Coyotes family as she continues to cover the Arizona Cardinals and Diamondbacks. She was thankful to work in a broadcast role to chronicle the team.
“I hope that Arizona can be that developmental state rather than sending everybody to the East Coast,” Eillis said with an NHL franchise no longer present. “At some point, somebody’s got to do it out here. So hopefully that can be us.”
Fausel believes Arizona is becoming a hockey state.
“When I was on the Kachinas, we made it to nationals three years in a row,” Fausel said. “We had some parents in the stands that were like, who are these girls from Arizona? We’re going to win this championship because they’re from Arizona, and we made it to the championship game. Unfortunately, we lost an OT and the same thing with ASU last year at Liberty.” The Sun Devils took the No. 1 team to overtime at nationals last season. “I’m sure they were thinking the exact same thing, like, who the heck are these girls? It definitely puts us on the map, especially with recruitment, too.”
McGinley was able to accomplish a “passion project” of his last season: Sending two teams full of Arizona high school hockey players to compete at the Lone Star Showcase in Dallas, Texas.
“It’s an unbelievable event because you’re there just to showcase players,” McGinley said. “You’re not there to win a tournament. You’re not there to shorten your bench and play your first line only because you’re trying to win. How do we get our players exposed to higher level programs?”
In the Coyotes’ final season in Arizona, the total number of registered players in the state decreased by nearly 200 skaters from 2022-23 to 2023-24. Only time will tell what hockey’s murky future will look like in Arizona.
For now, as Walsh signed off the Coyotes’ final televised game, “We walk together forever,” and hockey in the desert will continue to do the same.
