As the Glendale era ends, the real work begins for the Coyotes

When the final horn sounded on the Coyotes’ Glendale tenure, there was an all-too-rare electricity in Gila River Arena on Friday. The Coyotes had just concluded a dismal season and a disappointing chapter of their history with a 5-4 win over the Nashville Predators — one that felt impossible after Nashville took a 4-0 lead in the game’s first 6:57.

The players saluted the fans and the fans waited long after the game had ended for an encore. When the players finally obliged the fans’ patience by returning to the ice to throw jerseys, signed sticks and signed T-shirts to a groupie-like mob of admirers, you were reminded of all the things that felt possible so long ago when the Coyotes moved into this building in 2003, and again when they advanced to the Western Conference Final in 2012.

There were too few of these moments over the past two decades. There must be more in the next two. There have been a lot of important offseasons in this franchise’s history, but this is the biggest one of them all. It’s time for the Coyotes to go to work.

“The rebuild is hard on everybody,” GM Bill Armstrong said. “It’s hard on fans, it’s hard on coaches, it’s hard on players, but I think we tried to dig into the process, asking: ‘How can we get better as a team?’ Whether it’s practicing, whether it’s our food, whether it’s our travel, we just really focused on all of those things so that when we take that next step where we are becoming a team that’s looking at the playoffs, our process will be proper behind the scenes.

“This is the start of the second phase of the rebuild now, where we can finally start to reap some of the rewards for acquiring all those draft picks. Now we get a chance to go to the board and make some picks and start building that future. That’s an exciting time.”

The first key date on the calendar is May 10 when the NHL will hold the draft lottery and the Coyotes will find out where the first of their three first-round picks falls. Arizona didn’t secure the best odds in the lottery. That distinction went to the Montréal Canadiens, who will host the NHL Draft in July, just one year after falling to Tampa Bay in the Stanley Cup Final. 

While the odds still are not great for any team to land the No. 1 overall pick and the likely rights to Kingston center Shane Wright, this season was about tanking for the best possible outcome so the Coyotes just missed out on that goal by finishing 31st in the league standings. On the other hand, none of the players at the top of this draft are currently viewed as franchise players so the Coyotes are confident that they will find a player among the top-four picks who can move them forward.

“We’re gonna get a good player and that’s exciting for us as a staff,” Armstrong said. “Our scouts are drooling right now and we’ve got a number of different guys that have picked one. I feel very comfortable with our staff and the experience that we have. They’ve been there before so it’s nice to know that as we go through the process.”

While Armstrong and his staff put the finishing touches on their preparations for the draft, there is a far more pressing piece of business left undone. While the Coyotes know that they will be playing at Arizona State University’s multi-purpose arena for at least the next three seasons, they do not know where they will be playing after that. The Tempe City Council is still mulling the franchise’s proposal for an arena and entertainment district along the south bank of the Salt River.

That uncertainty is likely to be resolved this offseason, but the combination of the team’s departure from its long-time home without a clear path forward, and rising ticket prices for ASU’s cozy confines, led to a surprising moment at Gila River Arena on Friday. When team president Xavier Gutierrez conducted an interview shown on the scoreboard after the first period, many of the fans in the arena booed him.

“I think there’s a lot of emotional people in here right now,” Gutierrez said as he made his way through the press box afterward. 

When Gutierrez took over as team president nearly two years ago, he made it clear that getting a new arena built was priority No. 1 through 10. A global pandemic threw a major roadblock in what was already going to be a monumental task, but a series of self-induced missteps by the ownership group have eroded some of the fan base’s confidence in its ability to finally put this franchise on firm footing. 

Alex Meruelo, Gutierrez and the rest of the business side will be under the gun this summer to resolve this critical piece of the future while repairing an image damaged by a messy breakup with GM John Chayka, a scathing report from The Athletic on the internal workings of the organization, and a trail of unpaid bills to vendors, players and the City of Glendale.

The third piece of the puzzle is more esoteric. Coach André Tourigny has been widely lauded for his ability to build relationships with his players, and thereby foster the type of culture that the Coyotes want to exhibit. His impact on the progression of players such as Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz and Lawson Crouse is undeniable, but he will likely have a large cast of new characters next season if Armstrong executes his plan of acquiring more veteran contracts and more assets this summer. The challenge for Tourigny — and whatever staff remains — won’t get easier.

“The coaches, the management, as a group need to keep improving,” Tourigny said. “Even if you finish first, if you do the same thing next year, it won’t be enough because everybody improves. Everybody gets better. Everybody learns from other stuff, so we will learn from the playoffs, we will talk a lot about what we can do better. We’ll have a lot of chats with our players, we’ll have a plan for them for the summer, what they have to improve skill-wise, finesse-wise. Mentally, we’ll touch every aspect. We’ll go to war.”

Many of the veteran leaders that Armstrong brought in to help shepherd the young and middle-aged players to NHL adulthood will be gone, but there will be enough holdovers to see this process through next season, after which the Coyotes hope to start taking some tangible steps forward on the ice.

“There’s a lot of positives going forward,” defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere said. “Obviously, we weren’t set up to be the dynamo team. It’s a rebuild for a reason, but I think a lot of guys took steps forward not only on the ice but off the ice; leadership qualities and learning a lot about themselves as players. 

“We’ve got a lot of young guys who got a lot of opportunity (that) maybe they don’t get somewhere else. I think us just growing as an organization, from a culture standpoint, I think we took a lot of steps forward.”

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