Neutral Zone: defining roles for Juuso Välimäki, Jason Zucker, Josh Brown

When Juuso Välimäki and Clayton Keller executed a perfect give-and-go that gave the Coyotes a 2-1 second-period lead on Monday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, it was easy to understand Välimäki’s excitement. It was his first goal of the season and first since March 31, 2023.

“You can probably see it a little bit on the celly there,” he said after the game. “It’s been too long since the last one so it just kind of opened things up for me to be honest.”

That's what happens when you leave Vali open 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/XSooaItraM pic.twitter.com/0I8CBrY23J

— Arizona Coyotes (@ArizonaCoyotes) January 23, 2024

There was more to the celly than the end of a drought, however. Välimäki had been a healthy scratch for six straight games over a two-week stretch.

“Every day and every game that you don’t play adds up and it feels like it’s been a month,” he said. “It’s actually been shorter, but towards the end it started to feel long so we (he and coach André Tourigny) had a good discussion [Sunday] and I said, ‘I want to play. I’m tired of being in the stands so let me get out there.'”

Välimäki logged 16:57 of ice time in his return, putting the discussion points with his coach into practice.

“I liked his game,” Tourigny said. “He was really assertive. He made plays.”

Much of what Tourigny and Välimäki discussed in a couple of recent conversations remains private, but Tourigny provided a glimpse into those conversations on Saturday before the Coyotes faced the Nashville Predators.

“When he plays at his full potential, he’s an important player for us,” Tourigny said. “He’s a difference maker for us.

“He needed a little bit of a step back; not just one game and ‘Okay, get back at it.’ I had a long discussion with him. He needs to be at the right place mentally. When he plays on top of his game, he’s a guy who has a lot of swagger in his offense. He moves the puck, he jumps into the play, he’s really active.

“When he plays a more careful kind of a game, I think he loses that swagger and he doesn’t bring the same elements. For him, it was just to [get] a reset mentally to get back to the swagger he had for us for a long time.”

Välimäki lost three teeth and a lot of blood when he took a one-timer to the mouth from Stars defenseman Jani Hakanpää on Nov. 14, but he said that scare did not affect his play. He actually felt like his game improved after he returned from the injury.

“The message has just been, ‘Play with confidence and be the best version of myself every day,'” he said. “I obviously do everything every day to try to be the best, but the year hasn’t really gone as I expected in some terms of it.

“I think I’ve taken the steps in other areas, but production is part of my game and I haven’t really been able to do that as much as I would have liked. I think it just kind of built a little bit of pressure and frustration at some points. So we just talked about taking a breath.”

Välimäki didn’t want to come out of the lineup but he understood why the decision was made.

“When I knew it was going to be the case, you just kind of take a look in the mirror and just kind of put perspective on things,” he said. “I told myself, ‘I want to be better,’ but it ended up being pretty long.

“It doesn’t really matter anymore. If I play like [Monday], I think I can help the team and I don’t have to look back. That was the big message: ‘Let’s not look back. Let’s look forward.’ That’s what I’ll try to do.”

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Zucker walks the talk

When the Coyotes dropped a 6-2 decision to the Calgary Flames on Jan. 11, forward Jason Zucker pulled no punches when critiquing himself.

“I let the guys down,” he said. “I was terrible all night.”

Despite its blunt nature, it was the kind of accountability most have come to expect from a veteran as well respected as Zucker. But the true test comes in response, and Zucker responded in a big way on Monday against his former team, scoring off a feed from Logan Cooley, setting up Alex Kerfoot for another goal with a slick backhand pass from behind the net, and playing a complete game that earned praise from Tourigny.

“Since Calgary, I think he has had a great impact,” Tourigny said. “Zuck is a forechecker. He’s a guy who’s on puck, brings a lot of intensity. He goes to the net, he goes in the blue paint, gets some scrappy goals, and he’s a good shooter. But he needed to kind of adapt.

“We play a different style a little bit than Pittsburgh. We have less shot volume so when you’re a guy who goes to the net all the time and the puck’s not coming, it’s, ‘OK, where do I go?’ I think he’s found his game now. I think his teammates know him better. They put more pucks for him in that area and that paid off.”

Since that Calgary game, Zucker has five points in his past five games.

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What can Brown do for Coyotes?

When defenseman Josh Brown sat out as a healthy scratch for an entire month, Tourigny admitted to feeling badly for him, noting how professional Brown had been throughout the benching.

With the Coyotes employing seven defenseman recently, Brown has been back in the lineup for five straight games but his ice time was limited until Troy Stecher was lost for four to six weeks with a lower-body injury on Saturday against Nashville, and Matt Dumba went down with an injury against the Penguins on Monday.

Tourigny explained the approach.

“If you play seven defenseman it creates three, four or five defenseman who don’t have the rhythm and I don’t want that,” he said. “I talked to Brownie before and I said, ‘Listen, we’ll dress seven, that’s the good news. The bad news is we will play six plus one. We’re not playing seven because I don’t want the other guys to lose their rhythm. 

“Having that said, now you have an extra guy. If there’s a fight, if there’s an injury, if there’s someone who doesn’t play the way they can, Brownie can step in. That’s the way we want to use it. We don’t want seven defenseman to play 10-plus minutes. That won’t happen.”

The obvious follow is this: How is Brown expected to find a rhythm when logging such limited minutes?

“It’s tough,” Tourigny said, “but you know what’s tougher is getting a rhythm from the press box.”

Brown had a rough sequence in the second period when he turned the puck over in the neutral zone, didn’t stay in his lane defending (the Coyotes’ system is sometimes hard to unpack in this instance) and bumps his goalie and prevents him from making a save on Eller’s goal.

That play gets magnified when a player plays so little, but Tourigny liked the rest of Brown’s effort.

“He’s been put in a really tough spot by us coaches; the way we use him,” Tourigny said. “It’s tough to play five, six minutes, and then you jump out. You didn’t play for 10 minutes and someone’s coming balls out. It’s tough to stop.

“In the second period, he had a few moments, but first period, third period, he was rock solid.”

Too many men

Entering a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday, the Coyotes had taken the second most too-many-men-on-the-ice penalties in the NHL since the start of the 2021-22 season; André Tourigny’s first as coach.

Here’s a look at the dubious leaders in that department before Monday’s games, courtesy of NHL Stats.

Here’s what Tourigny had to say about it when PHNX Sports’ Steve Peters asked him about it at Monday’s morning skate.

Loose pucks

The Coyotes recalled defenseman Victor Söderström from the Tucson Roadrunners in the wake of Troy Stecher’s long-term injury (4-6 weeks) and Matt Dumba’s injury on Monday against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Söderström was featured in the most recent edition of the Coyotes prospect report.

Dumba did not travel with the Coyotes on their three-game trip to Florida, Tampa and Carolina. He left Monday’s game one shift after crashing into the boards. The initial thought is that the injury is not serious. The plan is for him to miss these games and have time to rest over the All-Star break.

Center Barrett Hayton (hand) is still on track to return on Feb. 1. He has not played since Nov. 16. There is no timeline on defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok, who has not played since Nov. 25. GM Bill Armstrong said that with his particular injury, healing times are difficult to predict.

Here’s a look at the remaining schedules before the All-Star break of the teams competing for the two Western Conference wild card slots:
Los Angeles (53 points): vs. Buffalo; at Colorado; at St. Louis; at Nashville.
Nashville (51 points): at Minnesota; at Edmonton; at Ottawa; vs. LA.
Arizona (49 points): at Florida; at Tampa Bay; at Carolina.
St. Louis (48 points): at Vancouver; at Seattle; vs. LA; vs. Columbus.
Seattle (47 points): vs. Chicago; vs. St. Louis; vs. Columbus; at San José
Calgary (47 points): vs. Columbus; vs. Chicago.
Minnesota (47 points): vs. Nashville; vs. Anaheim.

Top photo of Juuso Välimäki via Getty Images

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