The National Hockey League Board of Governors has approved the relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City, Utah, establishing a new NHL franchise under the ownership of Smith Entertainment Group. Hockey assets within the Coyotes organization will be transferred to the new team, which will play its games at Delta Center, the home of the Utah Jazz. The Coyotes concluded the 2023-24 NHL season on Wednesday night from Mullet Arena and defeated the Edmonton Oilers 5-2. After the game ended, Coyotes studio host Todd Walsh anchored postgame coverage and concluded the broadcast with a heartfelt message to the Coyotes fans on the Scripps Sports broadcast.

Within his prose, Walsh explained what the Coyotes meant to him and the special bond shared among those who consider themselves members of the hockey community. He discussed how people were there for him when he lost his parents and uplifted him in difficult times. To close his message, Walsh stated to viewers that they all “walk together forever as Coyote fans,” advancing a well-known hockey quote, “Win today and we walk together forever,” from Fred Shero, former head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.

Although the Coyotes were never able to attain a Stanley Cup championship, the organization provided plenty of memorable moments on the ice and developed players who made a lasting impact on the sport. Shane Doan, Dale Hawerchuk, Jeremy Roenick and Keith Tkachuk are just some of the players who energized hockey in the desert over the last 26 seasons. Walsh joined Bickley & Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 on Wednesday to elaborate on his emotions surrounding the situation.

“As I said, I’ve been sort of preparing for this moment, but I never thought it would be when the team was turning out the lights after we were done with our broadcast and leaving town,” Walsh said, “but I just wanted to speak from the heart and I wanted to thank the game and acknowledge briefly somehow, someway the people in it, because if you’ve been around this sport even a minute, I think you start to understand [and] realize that there’s nothing quite like the sport of hockey and the people in it and the great reverence that they have for anyone who puts time into the game.”

Walsh imparted a lesson he learned over the years that states that if you are good to the game, the game will be good back to you. He was able to relate to that on a personal level, and woke up to see the sun rise in the morning to make sure that life would go on after the Coyotes. Co-host Dan Bickley asked Walsh to elaborate on how everything felt for him, especially having been a part of the organization over many years. In response, Walsh explained how people who had not seen each other made eye contact and took time to speak with one another, engaging in similar conversations with several people.

“The first words that one of us would say – it was universal – [were], ‘This didn’t have to happen,’” Walsh said. “That’s what I kept hearing, and then I started to repeat it and that’s how I feel today. I’m not smart enough to talk about finances when you’re getting into the billions of dollars, but I am smart enough to know how things can work and I’ve seen it work, and I’ve seen the due diligence that has been done and has to be done in a situation like this in cultivating a sport, and I’ve seen how it has failed.”

The interview with Walsh took place before the official announcement of the team’s relocation. This transaction includes a stipulation that Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo has the right to reactivate the franchise if “a new, state-of-the art facility appropriate for an NHL team” is constructed within five years. Nonetheless, the outcome for many hockey fans in Arizona was disappointing, with Walsh describing the environment at Mullet Arena resembling that of a wake.

“My fear all along going into this for the last few years was at some point, someone’s going to walk up to a microphone in front of a bunch of cameras and say, ‘We did everything that we could,’ and I have a feeling we’re going to hear that,” Walsh said. “And I don’t want to hear it from the current ownership, but I feel like we’re going to hear that, and that’s what troubled me.”

By now almost everyone it seems has weighed in on an incredibly awkward situation at yesterday’s Indiana Fever press conference involving Caitlin Clark and Indianapolis Star reporter Gregg Doyel. Doyel’s strange exchange started with him making a heart gesture with his hands, something Clark flashes to her family after each game. “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine,” was Doyel’s reply.

Doyel has since apologized and wrote a column about it which said, in part, “I’m devastated to realize I’m part of the problem. I screwed up Wednesday during my first interaction with No.1 overall draft pick Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever…I was just doing what I do, talking to another athlete, another person, and didn’t see the line – didn’t even know there was a line in the vicinity – until I crossed it.”

Several in sports media gave their thoughts on the situation, on the air and through social media:

Josh Klingler and Bob Fescoe played the audio from the press conference on 610 Sports in Kansas City and when it ended, Klingler said, “What the hell was that?”

Fescoe responded, “That’s just creepy and if I’m Caitlin Clark, I’m like, ‘I don’t want this guy around.’ What was he doing to begin with?…Don’t get creepy…that’s just disgusting.”

In Boston, The Greg Hill Show on WEEI highlighted the incident in a segment called ‘How Creepy Is It?’

“He’s kind of a dink,” Hill said. “…If I were Caitlin Clark, I wouldn’t accept the apology.”

“He was lightweight flirting with her, he tried to make a joke and it didn’t land,” said co-host Jermaine Wiggins.

Mike Mulligan and David Haugh talked about the issue on their morning show on 670 The Score in Chicago. “It just fell so flat, and it was so borderline sexist, misogynistic, it was just the wrong tone,” Mulligan said. “It was completely unprofessional for an introductory news conference.”

Haugh replied, “Well it was unprofessional, but what was worse is because it was a 22-year-old female, it was inappropriate, and he should have known better…His apology was clumsy itself.”

105.3 The Fan in Dallas’ RJ Choppy said about Doyel, “He was an idiot…He tried and attempted humor…and it backfired. He’s not part of the problem, he is a problem, in general.”

Fresh off months of speculating who might be the new programming boss at WFAN, a new search is underway, this time the replacement is needed for John Sterling, who retired this week as the New York Yankees play-by-play voice. While the person would work for the radio station, the team will have plenty to say about who gets the job. Gregg Giannotti and Boomer Esiason talked about some candidates during Boomer & Gio today on WFAN, including national broadcasters such as Brendan Burke and Ryan Ruocco.

In speaking about what has been written recently in the New York Post and The Athletic, Giannotti said, “…There’s four candidates that they have listed for John Sterling’s replacement. And we know that Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari are two that are doing games right now and they are going to fill in for the rest of the year.

“They also mentioned…Brendan Burke the TV voice of the Islanders, who also does national hockey games for TNT, and they also have Ryan Ruocco on there who fills in on YES from time to time and also works for ESPN doing NBA games. Now, those last two guys are interesting because they would step right in, it would be bigger names, they are seasoned and they are really good.”

Giannotti discussed talking with Brendan Burke and said, “And I know that that was his dream because I had spoken to him about how he grew up at Yankees stadium because his father was a Yankees beat reporter and he used to work in the booth when he was a kid and he dreamt of doing that. But he has now gotten to a place on national TV in hockey and has a fulltime TV job, would he leave that or at least do both?…If I’m the person who is hiring these people and Breandan Burke tells me he wants to do this, then you got it, because he’s as good as anyone in the business right now.”

Ruocco also has a similar situation in that the 37-year-old has risen to be ESPN’s No. 2 NBA announcer in addition to his work in college basketball and with the Brooklyn Nets.

Boomer Esiason mentions there are other factors in all of this including finances and analyst Suzyn Waldman. “The thing that has already been proven is that Justin and Emmanuel both can work with Suzyn if she wants to remain. They are probably the cheaper options for the company…I don’t want to take anything away from those guys. I am sure their seat is burning wondering what’s going on. I would just say to both of them, they have an enormous opportunity here, to really show everybody, including the Yankess…and the question is who do they want in the radio booth? They might like Justin, they might like Emmanuel, because they work well with Suzyn, if Suzyn wants to stay.”

Giannotti says he thinks Shackil, 36, will have the upper hand and wondered how far he might be willing to go to get the fulltime job. “So basically, you’ve got Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari doing the rest of the season, they’re going to be in there, Justin’s going to get more games. This opportunity there for him is humongous because he’s doing the games… Does he really go for it, to the point where maybe he goes outside of his comfort zone to try and get more attention, or does he just stay sort of the pretty standard flat-lining guy that he’s been?”

Esiason gave his advice to both of the younger broadcasters (Berbari is 24) saying, “Here’s my advice. My advice is to be yourself. Less is more…They’re fine, they are both fine, they sound similar a little bit, because they’re younger.”