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World Junior Championship: Coming To Arizona?

By Richard Flores

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Arizona Coyotes could host the World Junior Championships (and more)

In the past, Arizona has been the subject of rumors centered around hosting big-market games and events, from the All-Star game that never was (and still isn’t) to the now oft-rumored outdoor game — but reports out this week suggest something much cooler is in the works.

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    • USA today is reporting that the Arizona Coyotes have shown interest in possibly hosting the World Junior Championships in 2018 — as well as jointly hosting a future Frozen Four with ASU in the Valley of the Sun.

    "“The Coyotes told USA TODAY Sports Thursday that they have already talked to USA Hockey about making a bid for the 2018 WJC, and are in discussions to have the potential for some Arizona State University games to played at Gila River Arena as early as next season.The Coyotes and ASU officials have opened talks about submitting a joint application to host an NCAA Frozen Four. Coyotes executives and ASU officials will both be attending the Frozen Four together in Boston this year.”"

    The 2016 World Junior tournament will be hosted by hosted by Finland, with the tournament returning to Toronto and Montreal in 2017.

    If the rumors are true — then what will the logistics look like?

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    • Well, the story is just developing — but one can surmise that there are two possible places to host games.

    If Arizona does win the bid for the 2018 WJC, it seems obvious that Gila River Arena is a reasonable place to host the games — but the tournament could also be hosted at US Airways Center (whose name will probably be changed to Talking Stick Resort Arena next season), where the Coyotes called home from 1996 until their 2003 move to Glendale.

    With those two viable options, the next thing to consider is whether or not organizers can create enough buzz among fans to go check out the game. Even this past month in both Toronto and Montreal, there were visible empty seats for some of the lesser games (including some pretty empty USA games).

    Obviously, there is a big population of Canadians who make the trek down to Arizona during the winter time — and many of those regularly attend Coyotes games — but for most of the population, there’s a fear that there wouldn’t be a big enough interest to draw the numbers of previous WJC’s.

    366,000 attended this year’s tournament, while the last American WJC drew 327,00 fans to Buffalo in 2011 — a much easier trip to make, and an easier sell to a traditional Northeastern hockey market.

    As awesome as it would be to host such an amazing tournament, though, it’s much more likely to either stay north of the border — or, at the very least, in the northern US.

    The other big news here, though, is that the Frozen Four is also a possibility in Arizona — and to me, it should be a lock for the NCAA to try and host that event here.

    With the ASU Hockey program joining the NCAA ranks on a gradual basis, it would indeed make sense for the NCAA to bring its best out west for the Frozen Four — in that situation, they would only need one building, and that would be Gila River Arena.

    With the addition of ASU it’s not out of the question to think that the NCAA would want to expand west and create a Pac-12 Hockey league. That is a question for another day, but a West Coast Frozen Four (and a successful one at that) could go a long way to growing the ASU program, the sport as a whole in the state, and the perception of hockey along the entirety of the West Coast.

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