NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman expresses more support for Coyotes ownership in arena matter

The NHL All-Star Weekend celebration in Las Vegas began Friday with an additional reason for Arizona Coyotes fans to rejoice, at least a little.

Forward Clayton Keller's participation was already a given, and Keller showed well with his performance in the NHL All-Star Skills competition. He clocked 18.997 seconds to hit four targets with pucks.

Beyond that, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman reiterated his belief that the Coyotes will get their arena situation sorted out, continuing his unfailing support for the franchise and majority owner Alex Meruelo as the organization seeks to finalize a deal to move into Arizona State University's multipurpose arena while hoping for approval for a new arena proposal, also in Tempe.

"As long as there is a commitment forthcoming for a new building, then it's going to be worth sticking with," Bettman said prior to the event on the ice at T-Mobile Arena.

The Coyotes appear to be moving forward with the plan to share a facility with Arizona State's hockey program, after it was confirmed last month that they were in deeper discussions about using Arizona State's still-under construction multipurpose arena near the Tempe campus as a temporary home for the next several years.

ASU is asking the state Board of Regents to approve revisions to its multipurpose arena project, plus two license agreements for its use, according to documents for the board's meeting next week.

The Arizona Board of Regents is expected to consider ASU’s proposal at its meeting Thursday.

The proposal documents say that in December 2021, the Coyotes approached ASU to propose playing their 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 home games at the 5,000-seat multipurpose arena, with the Coyotes' lease for Gila River Arena ending at the conclusion of this season. That would indicate that the Coyotes feel a new arena would be ready for use by the 2025-2026 season, but the project is still yet to be approved by the City of Tempe.

Also in the documents, the university is asking the board to approve the construction of a two-story, 15,000 square-foot annex structure adjacent to the northeastern edge of the arena. This annex will accommodate NHL-quality home and away team dressing rooms, training areas, equipment rooms, nutrition stations, a coaches work room, team storage and a fitness room.

All costs for the annex building and the required facility upgrades will be paid by the Coyotes, the university said in its proposal. The annex building would remain after the completion of the proposed new Coyotes arena, the land for which isn't far from ASU, and will be put to further use by the university.

There's more. Several facility upgrades are included in the revised project plan to meet NHL requirements, which would include NHL-quality ice equipment and enhanced broadcasting infrastructure, in-arena media and medical services and analytics and replay capabilities to meet NHL requirements.

The proposed project plan revisions will not delay the November 2022 opening of the multipurpose arena for the ASU ice hockey season. The facility, according to the documents, is expected to be available in December 2022 to host the first Arizona Coyotes home game of the season.

By that information, the Coyotes could open next season on an extended road trip before coming home to ASU.

"Hockey has done very well at all levels in Arizona since the Coyotes were there," Bettman said. "Just ask Auston Matthews."

Keller will play for the Central Division All-Stars on Saturday when the game begins at 1 p.m. Phoenix time on ABC. The format is a four-team, 3-on-3 tournament with three 20-minute games being played to decide the winner. The Central Division will face the Atlantic and the Pacific takes on the Metropolitan, then the winners advance and play for a $1 million cash prize.

The skills competition winners Friday were as follows:

—Sebastian Aho of the Carolina Hurricanes beat out Keller and others in accuracy shooting, hitting the targets in 10.937 seconds.

"I thought it wasn't bad. I wasn't nervous at all," Keller said. "We had no time to prepare. We had two games and not many practices, either."

—The St. Louis Blues' Jordan Kyrou as fastest skater, at 13.550 seconds to complete a lap around the ice.

— Goaltenders Jack Campbell of Toronto and Andrei Vasilevskiy of Tampa Bay, combining to win the Save Streak event with nine consecutive saves between them.

— With the backdrop of the Bellagio Hotel fountains and from the lake that surrounds them, Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets won the Fountain Faceoff in which players shot illuminated pucks over the water at nets and onto small circular platforms.

—The Hardest Shot competition went to Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman, who reached 103.2 miles per hour with a shot.

In the Breakaway Challenge, Minnesota's Kirill Kaprizov donned an Alex Ovechkin jersey in tribute to the Washington Capitals star, who is out of the All-Star Game while in the COVID protocol. Anaheim's Trevor Zegras wore a uniform from the movie "Dodgeball," and scored while blindfolded, with balls being thrown at him.

Jack Hughes of New Jersey went with a magician's routine in the spirit of Las Vegas, and revealed a kid who took the shot and scored. Alex DeBrincat of Chicago was dressed like a character from "The Hangover" and scored with a football thrown from Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr.

But the Las Vegas Golden Knights' Alex Pietrangelo got the highest score to win in front of his home crowd.

Keller said he enjoyed that competition the most, and thought Zegras was most impressive.

— Joe Pavelski of the Dallas Stars won the "21 in '22" hockey blackjack competition, hitting large playing cards with shots to get to 21.

Republic higher education reporter Alison Steinbach contributed to this report.

Get in touch with Jose Romero at Jose.Romero@gannett.com. Find him on Twitter at @RomeroJoseM.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman expresses more support for Coyotes ownership in arena matter