The Arizona Coyotes’ arena has one of the most unique names in all of sports as it is not named after a company. Instead it is now known as the Gila River Arena based on the proximity of this major river to the arena itself. It also included previous names such as the Glendale Arena, since it is technically located in Glendale, Arizona and the Jobing.com Arena afterwards until 2014.
Table of Contents
Arena Guide by Ice Hockey Tripper
History
This is one of the newer arenas in the grand scheme of things as it was opened on December 26, 2003 like a Christmas gift to the city. The Arizona Coyotes have been the main attraction ever since after their relocation to the city from the Winnipeg Jets back in the 1990’s. The arena was also home to the Arizona Sting at one point, which was a team from the National Lacrosse League (NLL) if you have ever heard of that. It does compete with the Phoenix Suns Arena for hosting events, but they have the NBA and this arena covers everything in the NHL.
Now this arena was created specifically for the Coyotes, because they were originally sharing an arena but this became a cumbersome task. However the problem here was that the original arena was designed with only basketball in mind so it could barely hold a NHL rink and this caused lots of inconvenience to everyone involved. This is the history as to how the Gila River Arena came to be when the agreement for the stadium was first signed in 2001. As for the new history of the arena, within the past three years a brand new scoreboard was installed to almost everyone’s liking. Besides this addition it seems that there will not be any additional renovations anytime soon. Unfortunately it also appears that the Coyotes will not be adding to the history of the arena anytime soon either.