Plan for the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate Roadrunners remains unclear [Video]

The Tucson Roadrunners, the American Hockey League affiliate of the now-inactive Arizona Coyotes, will start their playoff run next week as the second-place team in the Pacific, but their future home is in flux.

Coyotes intellectual property owner Alex Meruelo told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo on Thursday he kept the Roadrunners in his agreement to sell the Coyotes’ hockey operations department to Ryan and Ashley Smith in Utah while he seeks to buy land for a new arena.

Meruelo mentioned moving the roadrunners up to Mullett Arena to keep professional hockey in the Valley after the Coyotes spent the past two seasons at Arizona State University’s Arena.

In a press conference Friday with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Meruelo walked that back, but he left the possibility open.

“This is very early in the process so I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Meruelo told reporters. “We talked about maybe playing half the season in Tucson and half the season in …