• Slug: Sports–Matt Shott Arizona Hockey Foundation. 1,680 words.
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By Sean Brennan
Cronkite News

PHOENIX – In Arizona and across the country, many ice rinks are private and free to operate without answering to anyone when making decisions.

That can lead to friction between two rinks whose owners do not see eye-to-eye on any issue, and those in Arizona are no exception. But when honoring the late Matt Shott by hanging his jersey, each one in the state agreed without question to the tribute.

A 10-year employee of the Arizona Coyotes, Shott passed away in 2021 at just 34 years old after a lengthy battle with liver cancer. Last week, it was announced that he will be inducted into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame for his efforts. Now three years after his death, his lasting impact is doing the work to continue the sport’s growth through the Matt Shott Arizona Hockey Foundation.

Established in 2024 to fill the void left by the Coyotes’ relocation to Salt Lake City at the end of the 2023-24 season, the organization aims to continue expanding the game of hockey in State 48. Several prominent figures in the Coyotes’ organization are behind the foundation’s creation and are looking to continue the progress Shott started.

“When you look at all of the programming that the Coyotes ran to grow hockey, his fingerprints were all over it,” said Lyndsey Fry, the foundation’s co-founder and former Olympian. “When he first started, he was really like a department of one and over time was able to build up his department, really kind of proved the value of what he was doing.

“And he was just an absolute workhorse.”

As the calendar flipped from 2023 to 2024, there became an increasing feeling that the Coyotes’ days in the Valley were numbered. After all, the team played inside Arizona State’s 5,000-seat Mullett Arena and, despite efforts to secure multiple parcels of land, had no concrete plans to build their own arena. Fry began to develop a contingency plan, starting with a series of conversations.

Initially, Fry believed professional hockey would exist in Phoenix for at least another season, as the Coyotes had one year left on their contract with Mullett Arena after the 2023-24 campaign. But when the relocation to Utah became imminent — a surprise to players and staff alike — she realized the process needed to be expedited.

Shortly thereafter, the foundation became an incorporated entity.

“She saw the writing on the wall,” Arizona Hockey Legacy managing director Zack Savage said. “She started to kind of develop this concept of how to keep the Arizona hockey community supported without an NHL team. The impact of the NHL team, obviously, was significant.”

Significant may be putting it mildly.

In essence, Arizona’s hockey community was losing its most prominent supporter. Programs provided by the franchise’s foundation, including a ball hockey league, Learn-to-Play and more, were suddenly gone. However, Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo left the foundation with a $1 million parting gift and many of the team’s assets that remained in the Valley.

Instead of starting from scratch, the Arizona Hockey Legacy had a boost from the get-go with an abundance of resources, including hockey sticks, gear and vehicles. The cash was used to hire several of the Coyotes’ old staff members, including ex-Coyotes players Michael Grabner, Jason Demers and Greg Adams.

Now the Arizona Hockey Legacy has multiple programs like Learn-to-Play — which was re-established after the Coyotes left and renamed to “Shott’s Tots” — or the Arizona Ball Hockey League, an effort that was spearheaded by Jonah Rodriguez, a former Coyotes employee and current Street Hockey Manager for the foundation.

Savage noted jha high demand for Learn-to-Play across the Valley and positive headway in schools. Additionally, the foundation will work with the Arizona Amateur Hockey Association, Arizona’s USA Hockey representative, to create a joint commercial that will air on Scripps Sports, a network that airs games for the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Hockey Club.

Despite many successes, the Arizona Hockey Legacy encountered challenges such as rapidly building a sustainable business in a short time and establishing a rapport with stakeholders like rinks and parents.

“I think it took a little while for people to understand what we were trying to do and adopting it,” Fry said. “But for me, the biggest thing, whether it’s the Matt Shott foundation or my work with the Kachinas and really just youth hockey in general, I just don’t want there to be a break in growing the game.”

Naming the organization came easier. The founding members intended to name it after Shott, the driver behind hockey’s growth in Arizona.

Shott’s Life And Legacy

Hockey wasn’t always Matt’s passion. He was more interested in playing other sports like basketball at a young age, according to his mother, Shelley. His interests came as a surprise considering both his parents were Canadian, with his father even playing and coaching hockey but eventually, thanks in part to his parents’ guidance, he fell in love with the game.

Once he began playing, there was no going back. Shott resonated with the sport and the Coyotes as a Valley native. That passion for hockey, like his trademark kindness and compassion, never wavered.

“We were both just so proud of everything he was doing,” Shelley said. “From playing when he was younger to getting into (the industry), he insisted he was going to work at the rinks … He insisted he was going to work for the Coyotes one day … It’s just like, ‘Good for you, man, you’re living your dream and you’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do.’

“(I’m) just so proud of him for doing it.”

Eventually, Shott accomplished what he set out to do: work for the Coyotes. But he had already left his mark on hockey in Arizona before he joined the NHL franchise in 2011.

Shott “had 10 years with the Coyotes, but the prior 10 years was with the community,” according to Savage. He spent that time working at rinks, from driving Zambonis and coaching junior teams to organizing clinics.

You name the task, and Shott probably did it.

“Matt had that respect going into these rinks,” Savage said. “Because he earned it by putting his nose to the ground and just absolutely grinding through these rinks. He was a coach at Jr. Coyotes, he was a coach at (Desert Youth) Jr. Sun Devils. He was a coach anywhere he could possibly touch.”

After Shott joined the Coyotes in October 2011, he maintained his passion for growing the game, only he had a larger platform to do so. It was a perfect match.

Two focal points of the Coyotes’ community outreach were Learn-to-Play and street hockey, areas that Shott helped grow. His methods were unorthodox; a perfect example was when he met with his middle school physical education teacher, who he admittedly didn’t pay attention to in class, to implement a street hockey curriculum to get more children exposed to the game.

According to Savage, Shott also laid the blueprint for creating the Coyotes street hockey program that secured a sponsorship with Equality Health — one of the NHL’s largest partnerships at the time — for the 2023-24 season. While he was very present in both Learn-to-Play and street hockey, what made Shott’s efforts impactful was his work behind the scenes.

Shott was instrumental in the One-Step Bobcats, a program that offers neurodivergent children the opportunity to play hockey, later becoming the One-Step Coyotes. He also invited the children, in addition to those in Learn-to-Play, to skate on the ice at Desert Diamond Arena, the Coyotes’ old home.

The kicker: none of this was work to him. There were no gimmicks or facades, that was just Shott.

“Matt, in a lot of ways, he was a pioneer,” said Matt McConnell, the current TVplay-by-play announcer for the Utah Hockey Club who previously worked for the Coyotes. “He just cared so much and he believed so much in giving youth programs the opportunity to thrive.”

McConnell, who served as the Coyotes’ announcer from 2011 to 2024, has gotten to know the hockey community in Arizona well over his 13 years in the Valley. When asked to describe the Coyotes’ fanbase in one word, he chose resilience. Throughout the team’s 27 years in the Valley, fans endured several ownership changes, arena drama and the franchise even filing for bankruptcy in 2009.

Resilience is also a word that perfectly summarizes Shott’s efforts in Arizona. From 2010 to 2024, the number of USA Hockey members in Arizona skyrocketed from 3,649 to 9,524, pointing to a significant increase in interest and popularity.

Of course, Shott isn’t solely responsible for this jump, but he undoubtedly played a massive role in exposing hockey to a state where football, basketball and baseball are king.

“He was one-of-a-kind,” said Olivia Matos, former executive director of the Arizona Coyotes Foundation and a member of the Arizona Hockey Legacy’s advisory board. “His heart and soul went into growing the game here. He was the reason that Arizona hockey grew so much.

“If he wasn’t behind it, it wouldn’t have happened. Every single day he fought for more and more and to give kids the opportunity to play and participate. He literally spent his entire day doing it.”

That’s what Shott embodied — a tireless worker who stopped at nothing to grow the game he cared about. Being an ambassador for a winter sport in a desert climate was surely an uphill battle that didn’t matter. Even if told something was impossible, he refused to give up and kept trying.

The Arizona hockey community still struggles to accept that such a well-respected and beloved pioneer is no longer around to continue witnessing the fruits of his labor.

But nothing can take away from his impact on so many lives. The Arizona Hockey Legacy is a perfect reminder of all the good Shott brought to anyone he encountered.

“I live with the good memories,” Shelley said. “And there were lots of them.”

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