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The Arizona Coyotes’ ownership group first floated the idea of bringing their AHL affiliate west two years ago. Two issues stopped them.

Without any AHL teams in the West at the time, GM Don Maloney was concerned that the travel for games would be prohibitive. Second, there wasn’t a team available to purchase, so the Coyotes tabled the idea.

Two years later, those hurdles have been removed. The AHL Board of Governors approved the conditional sale of the Springfield Falcons to the Coyotes on Monday, while also approving the franchise’s relocation to Tucson.

The Coyotes must still reach an arena lease agreement with the City of Tucson and gain City Council approval, but sources on both sides of the fence said Monday that a deal appears imminent, with a City Council vote coming as soon as May 17.

Coyotes President and CEO Anthony LeBlanc met with Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild last week, and with council members individually so he would not violate open meeting laws. LeBlanc believes the council’s concerns over costs and available dates at the Tucson Convention Center have been addressed.

Now that five other NHL Pacific Division teams have formed an AHL Pacific Division (Vancouver is the lone holdout), the Coyotes are eager to get their main farm team close to home.

“In talking to a lot of people, especially the western teams out here, they can’t believe how much of a benefit it was for them,” Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said. “We want to move this organization ahead. In that respect, they were all ahead of us. Now we’ll be on the same playing field there.”

There are numerous advantages to having an AHL team close by. First and foremost, it enables the Coyotes to call up players on a moment’s notice in the event of injuries or illness. When the team’s affiliate was in Portland, Maine or Springfield, Massachusetts, it would require a full travel day to reach Arizona, so the team was often left shorthanded.

Tippett joked that East Coast trips were the best time for Coyotes to fall ill or suffer injuries.

“If you look at the stats, we flipped out more players when we were traveling than we were here,” he said.

Tippett elaborated on the other options Tucson will afford the team.

“Huge benefit, especially when you’ve got young players, you’d like to flip somebody out for the other guy — sometimes to send a message, sometimes just to look at a guy. We never had the ability to do that,” he said. “It changes the dynamic because you can have a guy who might play and might not play. Maybe you have a guy that doesn’t feel well at the morning skate. You’ve got to supplement that guy there. (An AHL) player might come and he might not play.”

Tippett also noted that with the proximity and ownership of an AHL team, the franchise can achieve more consistency in the business, coaching and training practices it implements.

“To have them so close where you can keep track of each other and you watch each other’s games every night, it’s a benefit that with our team on the East Coast we haven’t had,” he said.

In the past, the Coyotes’ AHL teams have bristled when Arizona called up too many players and left the minor-league team shorthanded as it tried to win, and win over fans in East Coast markets. The Coyotes want to be sensitive to the needs of their AHL club, and they want that club to win because they want to foster a winning environment, but the greater goal is to build a foundation for the NHL club and the new model means less pushback with everyone eyeing the same goals.

In past years, the AHL roster has been stocked with some players who weren’t really NHL prospects. Tippett said that will continue to fluctuate from year to year, but next season will be a great year to watch an AHL franchise in Tucson because the Coyotes have a lot of top prospects who could see time there, including 2014 first-round pick Brendan Perlini, 2014 second-round pick Ryan MacInnis, 2013 second-round pick Laurent Dauphin, 2012 first-round pick Henrik Samuelsson, 2015 fifth-round pick Conor Garland and 2014 second-round pick Christian Dvorak, if he doesn’t make the NHL club.

The final benefit to having a team in Tucson is the Coyotes’ long-stated goal of expanding hockey’s footprint in the state. LeBlanc believes that starts with the state’s second largest market.

The City of Tucson has no ice rinks for youth hockey other than the part-time ice available at the Tucson Convention Center, which is also used by the University of Arizona’s club team. This move could help spur the construction of rinks for a local youth program to continue hockey’s growth in Arizona. The team has already had preliminary discussions on that front.

“There’s no way Tucson doesn’t make sense,” LeBlanc said.

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