Former NHLer Luke Gazdic sounds off on Coyotes relocation.

Although several teams are in the middle of very heated playoff races as we draw closer and closer to the end of the 2023-24 National Hockey League regular season, much of the talk in the hockey world this weekend will be dominated by a non-playoff team in the Arizona Coyotes.

As more and more details began to leak out about what looks more and more like the inevitable relocation of the Coyotes to Salt Lake City, Utah, we are starting to hear a number of takes emerge on the topic. One former NHL player who has quickly made up his mind on this entire fiasco is former Edmonton Oilers forward Luke Gazdic.

On Friday night, during the intermission of a showdown between the Coyotes and the Oilers, Gazdic tore into both the Coyotes and the NHL for how this situation has been handled. Gazdic did little to hide his disgust at the situation, going so far as to mock the entire process.

"It's been a bit of a clown show to be honest from start to finish," said Gazdic on Friday night.

According to Gazdic, the players on the Coyotes roster were caught completely off guard by the news.

"It seems like the players have been pretty blindsided by it," added Gazdic.

The former player went on to express his condolences to those who will suffer the most as a result of this move being kept under wraps.

"That's the people I think about first and foremost is the players and their families and uprooting their families to a new city and location," said the former NHL player.

"I also think about the staff, when I was in Edmonton especially I had a great relationship with everyone from game day operations to ticket sales to community relations and I think of all these people involved that had no decision making whatsoever over the hockey operations process that are probably gonna be out of jobs," he added. "People that have worked there, some of them, for decades."

Sentiments that I think many will echo in the coming days.