Auston Matthews and the Rise of Hockey in the Desert

When you run through the list of home states on the roster of the USA's World Junior Hockey Championship team, you'll see predictable results: Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts. Cold, northern places where hockey thrives.

Then you come to Arizona: the unlikely home of hockey's next superstar.

Eighteen-year old Auston Matthews isn't just leading the Americans in his second tournament; he's a lock to go No. 1 overall in this summer's NHL Entry Draft. Matthews missed the cutoff for last year's draft by two days. Otherwise, he would likely be playing in the NHL right now. Instead, the remarkably skilled 6'2" center opted to play his likely final year outside the NHL for the Zurich Lions in Switzerland's top professional league. He is second on the league-leading Lions in scoring, despite having missed ten games with an upper-body injury. After Matthews scored a hat trick in the 7-0 quarterfinals rout of the Czech Republic, he is leading the USA in scoring with 11 points through five games at the World Juniors. Matthews will continue to lead the team's offense in Monday's semi-final against Russia.

Matthews has had an unlikely journey to stardom, one that speaks to the NHL's work over the last two decades to get a foothold in "non-traditional" hockey markets like Phoenix, where the Arizona Coyotes have ranked in the bottom three in average attendance every season since 2007 and seem constantly under threat of relocating. The growth of hockey in Phoenix has been precarious since the Coyotes arrived in 1996. But players like Matthews are evidence that the game's rising impact can't only be measured with attendance numbers.

***

Auston Matthews says what inspired him to pick up a hockey stick for the first time was going Phoenix Coyotes games. His uncle had seasons tickets and Matthews would marvel at the game's speed while admiring players like Daniel Briere and Shane Doan. At age 3, Matthews had no idea that the NHL in the desert was something of an anomaly.

"I don't think I'd be playing hockey if the team weren't in Arizona," he says. Matthews played baseball as well, after his parents insisted that he play two sports. But at 13 he gave up baseball to focus on hockey, and then steamrolled his way through the U.S. National Team Development Program.

"None of my friends really played hockey," he says. "I was in the third grade and almost gave up hockey to play football because that's what all my friends were doing. I ended up realizing it didn't make sense."

Getting kids interested in hockey can take time—the sport requires lots of gear, lots of travel, and inconvenient practice times. But it helps when NHL franchises provide an opportunity for young fans to dream a little about their future. Every off-season, like clockwork, we hear about another chapter of drama regarding the future of the Coyotes and the Florida Panthers. Will they relocate? Seattle? Las Vegas? Quebec City? Meanwhile, the fruit of these franchise's labor is finally—the Coyotes and Panthers entered the NHL in 1996 and 1993, respectively—beginning to emerge.

"It all starts with the NHL," says Steve Sullivan, a former Coyote and veteran of over 1,000 NHL games who now serves as the Coyotes' Development Coach. "In non-traditional markets it's very hard to grow the game of hockey if there's nothing to look up to. You have to have the National Hockey League team there to pull that off. That's why you'll see LA and California, the growth they had there came from when Gretzky got there, the exposure he gave the game grew the game and now you see more players coming out of California."

In 2010, two California-born players, Emerson Etem and Beau Bennett, were taken in the first round of the NHL draft and Bennett became the highest-drafted player born and trained in California in NHL history.

"These hockey markets have succeeded in growing hockey from the grassroots level, which I think is a real positive that I think should get more credit," says Florida Panthers General Manager Dale Tallon. To wit: Jakob Chychrun, the hulking defenseman likely to be the first defenseman selected in the 2016 draft, was born in Boca Raton, Florida and played for the Florida Jr. Panthers organization.

The Panthers recently received $86 million from the Broward County Commission to help keep the team, who've long struggled financially, afloat. As part of the deal, $1.5 million will be invested in youth hockey.

The Panthers have had a surprisingly strong start to the season, and Tallon believes the success of the franchise is "definitely" connected to what he sees as a continued rise in participation in minor hockey.

Tallon is quick to point out that many players in these warmer climate cities end up retiring there and coaching hockey. The lure of the year-round sun is enough to keep them around. Former Panthers Marco Sturm and Radek Dvorak retired in Florida and are both involved in coaching minor league hockey. Having these former pros in the game not only increases interest, but also the increases the quality of the teams they coach. Better coaching will almost always lead to better players.

Consider Sean Whyte—a Los Angeles Kings player for parts of two seasons before finishing his career with the Phoenix Mustangs of the West Coast Hockey League—who stayed in Arizona and is now Director of Hockey Operations/Coach-in-Chief for Desert Youth Hockey, one of the state's largest minor hockey organizations.

Whyte has worked with Desert Youth Hockey since retiring in 2001 and coached Matthews when he first began playing hockey. He argues that better coaching and having access to the Coyotes have been vital for young players in Arizona like Matthews.

"The Coyotes are very important. There's kids that, after going to a few games, have someone to emulate. It's right there in front of them: it's not on TV because, let's face it, TV doesn't do hockey any justice to be begin with. When you're watching it live, kids will fall in love with it," he says.

Losing the Coyotes to relocation would probably make a lot of people happy, particularly those in markets like Quebec City who are currently pining for a team after losing the Nordiques to Colorado in 1995. But a move like that would only further solidify hockey as a regional, niche sport amongst its larger counterparts such as baseball and basketball. For a league that is seemingly so focused on expanding their product's reach, Auston Matthews emerging from the dessert as the poster boy for a generation of Coyotes fans is a dream come true.

"(Relocating the Coyotes) will stunt the growth of hockey in its tracks from the moment they leave," Sullivan says. "You'll see a drastic decline in numbers very, very quickly."

As it stands, Arizona minor hockey teams already figure themselves to be the underdogs in tournaments, especially against teams from hockey hotbeds. Looking back, the lack of recognition for Arizona as a hockey market made Matthews work that much harder to get noticed.

"We'd always have to travel to those places to play in tournaments," he says. "It was tough playing against those teams that always had such great players, given that they're big hockey markets and Arizona, not being a big hockey market. But I think it's really growing a lot. Playing those teams helped us a lot because they were being scouted as well. You definitely wanted to show up when you play them."

But Arizona's position as a non-traditional hockey market could eventually change. Auston Matthews is not just an example for younger players in his state—he's proof that the system is already working.