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Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold was discussing the future of Coyotes prospect Sam Lipkin when he shifted subjects, unsolicited, to discuss Arizona’s development staff.
“I’ll say this about Arizona,” Pecknold said by phone last week. “They are on top of things. [Development coach] Nathaniel Brooks and [director of player development] Lee [Stempniak] are great. I think Nathaniel Brooks talks to my assistant every week. I don’t know if there’s any other NHL team that does that.Â
“I don’t have 56 draft picks here. It might be different if I was like some of these other teams that have 15 and 16. I have three. But Arizona’s development staff is really good. They’re locked in. They stay on top of things and they give great input. They have a great relationship with Sam and my staff.”
If you needed another reminder of the ongoing work of the most complete Coyotes hockey operations staff in franchise history, it’s telling when the coach of the defending national champions pauses his thoughts to deliver that sort of compliment.
As we noted in a story on Wednesday, rebuilds can take a long time. They can be painful and downright depressing, but there is cause for optimism, both with the prospects that are either in the system or coming, and with a development staff of Stempniak, Jeff Shantz, Kurtis Foster, Brooks and Charlie McTavish (not to mention the Tucson coaches and all the trainers) that has taken this department to a level never seen before in Arizona.
With Lipkin preparing to open the ECAC Tournament against RPI on Friday, with forward Vadim Moroz having just been eliminated from the KHL playoffs, and with goalie Carsen Musser trying to help Green Bay secure a high seed in the USHL’s Clark Cup Playoffs next month, we checked in on all three players with the help of Stempniak, Pecknold and McTavish.
When Sam Lipkin was deciding whether to turn pro or return to Quinnipiac last summer — after the Bobcats won the NCAA national championship — coach Rand Pecknold had a simple question for him and teammate Collin Graf.
“As far as the things that you need to get better at, can you do that in the American Hockey League, playing 80 games with exhibitions, plus playoffs?” Pecknold said. “If you go back to college, you’ll play 40 games plus playoffs so you can get in the weight room more and you can work on those needs with more practice time.
“I can’t speak for Sam, but I think that was part of why he came back. He had a phenomenal development year last year. Why would you leave an environment like that? It’s one thing if he was ready to step right into the NHL like Logan Cooley, who I had at world juniors, but he was not.”
Aside from the need to get bigger, stronger and faster, Lipkin has faced some challenges this season. Pecknold wanted him to assume a leadership role as a sophomore on a team that sustained multiple losses after its historic season.
“He was a really good [co-]captain in Chicago when he won [the USHL’s Clark Cup] with the Steel,” Pecknold said. “When you’re going to be one of the team’s better players, whether you like it or not, you’re a leader. With leadership comes responsibility.”
In the Coyotes development staff’s early viewings, Lipkin got off to a slow start that director of player development Lee Stempniak chalked up to a variety of factors, including those mentioned above. While he had a four-point game against American International, he had points in just three of the Bobcats’ first eight games and just six points in that span.
Since then, the 2021 seventh-round pick (No. 223) has rounded into form.
“He’s been playing a lot stronger in the last month of the season,” Stempniak said. “His point totals are about the same. I think you were hoping he would take a little more of a step to drive play on his line, but in the last month especially, he’s been doing that more.Â
“He’s been playing on the inside. He’s been around the net. He’s been getting more passes in the slot. He’s been moving his feet more and skating more and his game has improved.”
Lipkin has played a little center this season, but Pecknold has used him mostly at left wing, which is where he is playing now. He has also used him as the primary faceoff man on the top power-play unit “because he’s our best guy,” and also on the penalty-killing unit.
“He’s a guy where traditionally he has been strong in the playoffs and we hope and expect and look for him to raise his game to another level and be a major factor in the ECAC playoffs and the NCAA Tournament,” Stempniak said. “They have a really strong team and they should advance but we want to see him be a big part of that.
“He bounces around on the power play where sometimes he’s net front, he’s the bumper, he’s on the flank. Adding more versatility to his game has been the big takeaway this year when you watch him. He’s a smart player, he has good hockey sense, and he can make the small-area plays, but each level as you go up gets faster and faster so just continually working on his skating and trying to find a little more quickness, find another gear, I think will unlock a lot of different areas of his game that he’s already very good at.”
Vadim Moroz’s first extended season in the KHL ended earlier this week when Dynamo Moscow eliminated his Dinamo Mink team in the first round of the KHL playoffs. The 2023 third-round pick did not put up eye-popping numbers this season, but he had 11 goals and 22 points in 63 games in the second-best league in the world.
The Coyotes are happy with the progress of a player not many fans get to see on a consistent basis.
“In broad strokes, he’s a really good all-around player where there’s not a lot of glaring weaknesses where you’re like, ‘Okay, we need to address this,'” Stempniak said. “He’s sort of a middle-six winger on a KHL team at 20 years old, which is impressive. He’s able to create offense. He backchecks. He tracks hard.
“He had two goals in the playoffs. One of them was a game-tying goal in Game 5 to force overtime. He’s got this good blend of being able to make plays, attack and attack off the rush. He competes. When you look at him, one of the bigger things is going to be just getting stronger and being able to win more pucks back for himself, win board battles and finding ways to just be stronger in those situations.”
Moroz also impressed the development staff with a character trait that is becoming a calling card for prospects in the Bill Armstrong/Darryl Plandowski era.
“He got sent down to the MHL team by his KHL team because they were trying to make the playoffs with the MHL team,” Stempniak said. “He showed a lot of maturity going down there and he played really, really well, and had some points. He created tons and tons of offense in the MHL, which is their junior league.”
Moroz is still under contract for another year in his hometown (he’s Belarusian), and the Coyotes are perfectly content to let him develop in his situation where he will likely have even more opportunity than he has this season.
“He gets a good amount of ice time and he plays in important situations,” Stempniak said. “He was consistently between 13 or 14 and 16 minutes in every playoff game, which is just great.
“He’s got a good shot. I think he’s got good offensive instincts. He’s a guy that you know can attack off the cycle and he can attack off the rush. He looks to make plays. There’s some creativity to his game where he’s looking for a little more complex play to make and he can do it. He balances that with a strong work ethic away from the puck to get pucks back. Now it’s just about trying to really elevate all the parts of his game.”
Charlie McTavish traveled to Madison, Wisconsin last Saturday to watch prospect Carsen Musser play live. He picked a good night. Musser stopped 46 of 48 shots and the Caps beat Sioux Falls in overtime, 3-2.
“He’s a big guy with a lot of physical tools,” McTavish said in a voice that could not conceal how impressed he was. “Physically, he’s awesome. He’s really flexible so he can make himself appear big on the ice. Sometimes, really big guys, even though they’re big, they don’t necessarily make themselves look big so that itself is a little bit of a skill. He uses his size really effectively.”
Musser has had an excellent season in his first (and what will be his only) season in the USHL. He is third in the uber-offensive league in goals against average (2.75) and second in save percentage (.905). He joined the Capitols this season from the USNTDP.
When viewing the 6-feet-4, 220-pound Musser, it’s easy to forget that he is still just an 18-year-old prospect.
“He’s a pretty structured, methodical goalie,” McTavish said. “He’s very calm in the net. He never moves more than he has to do. I think he understands how to use his size and how much space he can take up so he doesn’t get too excited; doesn’t reach for things that he doesn’t have to even if he moves really quickly. He’ll stretch if he needs to, but he’s pretty good at getting his whole body through shots when he moves laterally. He has composure in most situations.
“Part of the ability to be calm is also your ability to be strong and balanced in the sense that he’s never compensating for things. He has the ability to support his posture when he moves. He can separate his lower body from his upper body so he can stay calm with his upper body while his lower body is doing a lot of quick work.”
The goal for Musser this season has been one that McTavish and Coyotes goalie coach Corey Schwab preach often: Know what the next likely play is going to be so you can better anticipate instead of simply reacting.
“That’s something we discussed at the beginning of the year,” McTavish said. “You can see that in how he approaches entries and the consistency in how he manages different situations. His post play and his play behind the nets is really consistent. There’s a lot of plays that get generated in that league with guys coming in on that bad angle and cutting around the defenseman so it needs to be solid.
“The best way to explain it is being predictable in a good way; doing the same thing the same way so that the next play is predictable and your ability to follow a rebound or move is predictable and you’re not making those decisions in the moment. It’s actually taking a second to recognize the experience for what it is and then actually figuring out how that correlates to what you want to do and being able to make some of those adjustments. A lot of guys don’t think that way yet. They just do things and they have success, but I think that being a little more mindful and deliberate will help as he climbs the levels.”
Musser has a great development situation in Madison with former Wisconsin Badgers and Chicago Steel goalie Shane Connelly. The 2023 sixth-round pick (No. 166) will have another great situation when he enrolls at Colorado College in the fall.
Both Tigers head coach Kris Mayotte and associate head coach Peter Mannino are former goalies; offering a development focus that is rare in college hockey where not all staffs even have a goalie coach.
“I probably talk to Shane Connelly even more than I talk to Muss,” McTavish said. “He’s been really open at corresponding. We have our back-end communication logs and processes and he’s been unreal at using some of those methods to communicate with me even if it’s not via text or phone. We have been working really well together.”
Valley fans will get the chance to see Musser play live next season at Mullett Arena when the Sun Devils join the NCHC and host CC twice in Tempe.
Top photo of Sam Lipkin via Rob Rasmussen/Quinnipiac Athletics
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