10 more Coyotes-related questions as the NHL's regular season begins

The NHL is nearly back to normal. While COVID-19 protocols remain in place for all 32 teams and some border restrictions still remain between Canada and the United States, there are signs of better days ahead.

Media will be allowed to interview players in locker rooms instead of via the dreaded and sterile Zoom format. Arenas are returning to full capacity, and even the salary cap is expected to enjoy a modest $1 million bump in 2022-23 — a season in which we might also witness the first NHL game played in Mexico. 

On top of those bright spots, the Seattle Kraken will join the league as its 32nd team, the divisions will return to their pre-pandemic alignment (well, almost), and NHL players will participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, affording the rest of the league a nearly three-week break in February.

Coyotes fans won’t enjoy the same level of hope as other fans do. The team has embarked on an unmistakable and unapologetic rebuild. No matter how brave a face the players and coaches put on the outlook, this season will almost certainly end without a playoff berth, and if the team overachieves, it could also end with draft-day disappointment. It’s all about the future here, and the Coyotes need elite pieces for that future to look brighter than the past 25 years have looked.

Some of the more granular questions from our training camp primer have already been answered, but others still remain murky. As the NHL regular season begins on Tuesday (Thursday for Arizona), here are 10 more Coyotes questions.

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1. Does that 5-1 preseason mean anything?

I don’t mean to diminish the effort from the Coyotes. General Manager Bill Armstrong noted at media day that this was a hungry team and it showed in the preseason. The team played hard, the team bought into what new coach André Tourigny and his staff were preaching and it was clear that the players were motivated. The veterans on one-year deals were out to prove that they still belonged in the NHL, members of the middle core such as Lawson Crouse and Christian Fischer were trying to prove that they warranted a greater role, and some young players were out to win roster spots.

That said, the Coyotes won four games against two weak Pacific Division teams when the rosters often did not resemble NHL rosters. The veterans on those other teams didn’t have as much to prove as Arizona’s veterans, and once the regular season begins and the games have meaning, you can bet that almost every team on the Coyotes’ slate will come to play. 

Credit the Coyotes for their hard work and professionalism in the preseason, but hard work will only get you so far. Talent wins out over the course of an 82-game schedule and the current roster was not assembled with winning in mind. It’s good for fans to have hope, but a realistic assessment of this roster does not provide much reason for hope.

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2. What will GM Bill Armstrong do if the Coyotes overachieve?

It’s a question that Armstrong will answer with his actions rather than his words. No GM is going to openly admit that he wants to lose. It’s bad for business, even with a fan base as sober about the future and as seasoned from the past as the local fan base.

Here’s the thing: The Coyotes need elite players. To put it more plainly, the Coyotes need elite centers. They don’t have any. You don’t win Cups without them and with some exceptions, you don’t draft them outside of the top few picks.

Here are the Cup winners for the past 13 years along with their top centers and the year and number at which they were selected.

2020, 2021: Tampa Bay — Steve Stamkos (2008, 1st overall), Brayden Point (2014, 79th)
2019: St. Louis — Ryan O’Reilly (2009, 33rd)
2018: Washington — Nicklas Bäckström (2006, 4th)
2009, 2016, 2017: Pittsburgh — Sidney Crosby (2005, 1st), Evgeni Malkin (2004, 2nd)
2010, 2012, 2015: Chicago — Jonathan Toews (2006, 3rd)
2012, 2014: Los Angeles — Anže Kopitar (2005, 11th)
2011: Boston — Patrice Bergeron (2003, 45th)

So if those veterans on one-year contracts start to show some life, will Armstrong try to flip them for assets? Well, it makes sense for a team that is trying to build toward something bigger. Many of those players won’t be back and they might be able to help teams contending for a Cup in the short term, so why not get something for them, rather than losing them for nothing?

All of those one-year vets won’t pan out, of course, but some may. The trick will be delivering the appropriate message to the team and the coaching staff at the trade deadline (or sooner). Players and coaches are all about the here and now. GMs have to see the bigger picture, and that includes what comes after the here and now.

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3. Which teams have the best chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft?

In most models, Buffalo and Arizona are considered the frontrunners to finish with the worst record in the NHL. That should sound familiar to fans who watched the 2015 Tankathon, but there are other teams in the mix. DraftKings lists Anaheim, Arizona, Buffalo, Columbus and Ottawa all with 20,000-to-1 odds to win the Stanley Cup, and the Detroit Red Wings are 15,000-to-1 odds to win it.

The Athletic’s panel projects the Coyotes 32nd out of 32 teams. Most projections are similar, but there is this bizarre pick from FiveThirtyEight that has the Coyotes finishing with 88 points. That is both unlikely and unhelpful to the Coyotes’ ultimate goal.

Keep in mind that even if the Coyotes finish with the worst overall record, they still would have only a relatively slim chance of winning the lottery (last season it was a 16.6-percent chance). Everyone who has followed the Coyotes knows that the franchise has had no lottery luck, never picking above No. 3 in its 25-year Valley history.

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4. What will become of Phil Kessel’s ironman streak?

Kessel returned to practice just before the preseason finale in Vegas (he did not play in that game). Kessel has played in 900 consecutive games, the fifth longest streak in NHL history and the third longest active streak behind Philadelphia’s Keith Yandle and Patrick Marleau, who remains a free agent without a team as the season approaches.

As much as he downplays it, the streak is important to Kessel. He wants to play and as much as coach André Tourigny insists he will do what’s best for the Coyotes, it would be very difficult for him to sit Kessel in the midst of such a streak.

It’s not official yet, but both GM Bill Armstrong & coach Andre’ Tourigny have expressed confidence that Phil Kessel will be in the lineup on opening night.
The Coyotes have a few roster moves to make to pare to the roster limit by NHL opening day. IR will likely come into play.

— Craig Morgan (@CraigSMorgan) October 11, 2021

My money is on Kessel being in the opening-night lineup in Columbus on Thursday. He is 64 games behind Doug Jarvis’ NHL record, but as long as Yandle keeps playing, Kessel will be chasing that record, and if we’re taking bets, it’s probably also safe to assume that Kessel will pass Jarvis in another team’s jersey. As I have written multiple times, Kessel wants to be traded to a contender and the Coyotes want to grant his wish.

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5. Is the culture narrative overblown?

Probably. Every new coach and every new GM talks about establishing a culture when they arrive. That’s not to say it isn’t important. It is. In fact, it’s critical. A team must buy into what a coach and organization are selling in order for that team to achieve success.

But let’s be blunt here. How many of the players on the current NHL roster are going to be here in three seasons? Only Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz and Jakob Chychrun are signed beyond 2022-23 (toss in Victor Söderström if he sticks around), and you won’t find a soul within the organization willing to guarantee that Keller and Schmaltz will be here for the duration of their deals.

When discussing the culture that new coach André Tourigny wants to establish, it’s probably more important to Tourigny than it is to the team because there is no guarantee that Tourigny will be here either. That’s not a knock on his ability. We have no idea if he can coach at the NHL level. It’s just a nod to the reality that all NHL coaches face.

Take a look at the current list of 32. Fifteen of them — almost half! — have been on the job less than two years. There is no job security in the NHL coaching ranks. Tourigny has a lot to prove in a short period of time, and when looking over the Coyotes’ roster, the deck is stacked against him.

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6. Will Jakob Chychrun suffer the same lack-of-exposure fate that befell OEL?

I nearly spit out my coffee when I read Bleacher Report’s list of the NHL’s top 10 offensive defensemen and did not find Chychrun’s name on that list. Making matters worse, he wasn’t even on the honorable mention list of 10 more names. The latter list included former Coyote Keith Yandle, who couldn’t impress coach Joel Quenneville enough last season in Florida to stick around.

Maybe you think this list is an outlier. How could a guy who led the NHL in goals by defensemen and finished 10th in points last season — on an offensively challenged team, no less — not be considered one of the top 10 offensive defensemen? Well, he finished 10th in Norris Trophy voting. Tenth!

Overlooking the Coyotes Norris-caliber seasons is a tradition among PHWA voters. When Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored 21 goals (tied for second among defensemen) and had 55 points (third) in 2015-16, he finished ninth in Norris voting.

A lot of voters put the necessary time into their voting and research, but too many do not. On top of that, Arizona gets overlooked because it is a small market playing late games near the west coast and the team has not had a lot of success. Even if Chychrun improves on last season’s numbers (18 goals, 41 points in 56 games), he will still battle that bias. It’s not right, but it’s a reality that the Coyotes will have to combat through marketing.

I’m not saying that Chychrun should have won the Norris Trophy last season, but he should have finished among the top five, and probably as a finalist. Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in the game, especially from the defense position. Chychrun scores goals.

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7. Will the NHL ever consider substantive realignment?

We can only hope so. When the Coyotes arrived in the Valley from Winnipeg in 1996, they played in the Central Division for two more years before the league, prompted by expansion, realigned the divisions to move the Coyotes west.

With Seattle joining the league this season, the NHL chose the most expeditious and least thoughtful solution to its division alignment problem by shoving the Coyotes back to the seven-team Central and putting Seattle in the Pacific to give each division an eight-team look.

I understand the desire to balance the number of teams in the divisions, but there are other options and it is clear that the league really wasn’t interested in exploring them. How do I know? Because deputy commissioner Bill Daly told me so.

Here is our email exchange from the summer of 2020.

Me: “Obviously, the Coyotes aren’t thrilled with the move, but what if there were an alternate realignment proposal that worked? Would the NHL even consider other proposals or does that simply create too much of a headache?” 

Daly: “We are not considering changing what has been approved by the Board.”

The Coyotes have not been a popular topic at NHL Board of Governors meetings. The team has struggled to secure a financial foothold in the Valley and it has benefitted from league revenue sharing for many years. But if you want a team to finally succeed, you don’t force it into the worst travel schedule in the NHL.

Every one of the Coyotes’ division opponents resides in the Central Time Zone except for the Colorado Avalanche. For two-and-a-half months of the 2021-22 season, the Coyotes will be on Pacific time; the rest on Mountain time. Four of Arizona’s Central Division opponents are more than a three-hour flight away (Winnipeg, Minnesota, Chicago, Nashville) and two are more than two hours away (St. Louis, Dallas).

It is just absurd that the NHL didn’t consider this too great of a hardship. Maybe some day, it will come to its senses. In the meantime, I’ll keep spitting into the wind with updated realignment proposals.

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8. How many nations are currently represented on the Coyotes roster?

As far as birthplaces, six nations are currently represented on Arizona’s roster, which was down to 27 players as of Sunday. Those nations are Canada, the United States, Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic and France.

If Matias Maccelli (Finland), Janis Moser (Switzerland), Vladislav Kolyachonok (Belarus) and Liam Kirk (Great Britain) earn call-ups, they can make it 10.

The NHL is indeed a league of nations.

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9. Which players have the best chance for breakout seasons?

Based on potential roles and their offseason focus, three players come to mind: forwards Lawson Crouse, Clayton Keller and Christian Fischer.

All worked hard this offseason to prepare for an expanded role under the non-judgmental eyes of a new head coach. All should enjoy greater responsibility and ice time under André Tourigny. All are at the age 24, 23 and 24 respectively, where they should be taking the next step in their careers. And while Crouse and Fischer are entering contract years (they’ll be restricted free agents after the season), Keller is eager to prove that the biggest contract on the team is not money ill-spent.

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10. Just how long will this rebuild take, anyway?

That depends on a lot of variables. Will the Coyotes win the draft lottery in either of the next two seasons, and with it, the right to select franchise center Shane Wright or generational center Connor Bedard? If they do, will they draft enough impact players around one of those centers to be successful, and avoid following in the ill-fated footsteps of the Oilers and Sabres?  

Will Auston Matthews come home in 2024? Will the new arena get approved and with it, bring a little more money to spend on payroll? Will Jakob Chychrun become a perennial Norris Trophy candidate? Will Dylan Guenther become the franchise’s first 30-goal scorer since Radim Vrbata? Will Ivan Prosvetov or another goalie fill the next link in the organization’s impressive chain of good goaltenders that includes Nikolai Khabibulin, Sean Burke, Ilya Bryzgalov, Mike Smith and Darcy Kuemper? 

It certainly won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen in one or two years, but the Coyotes would love to be a playoff team by the time they are ready to move into their new arena — assuming they move into a new arena.

Can you predict the future? I don’t have those skills. It may be time for another visit to Mrs. Rita’s this spring.

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