The importance of Dylan Guenther: Revisiting a trade that jump-started the Coyotes' rebuild

Had it not been for Josh Doan’s stunning NHL debut on Tuesday, Dylan Guenther would be stealing all of the Coyotes’ individual headlines in 2024. Since his recall from the Tucson Roadrunners (AHL) on Jan. 6. — a recall he was told would be temporary while Jason Zucker was serving a three-game suspension — Guenther has 12 goals and 24 points in 36 games. That’s a 27-goal, 54-point pace for the 20-year-old forward.

In that span, only two players aged 20 or younger have more points than Guenther: Dallas Stars forward Wyatt Johnston (34), 2022 first-overall pick Juraj Slafkovský (27) of the Montréal Canadiens, and not Connor Bedard. Guenther is only 13 points behind heralded Coyotes rookie Logan Cooley despite playing less than half the games. His points per game rank fifth in the 2021 draft class among players who have at least 15 points.

“Everybody talks about his shooting; OK, it’s obvious,” coach André Tourigny said. “But he has a good stick. He reads the play extremely well. He plays extremely well in his own zone. He sees the play before the play happens; he’s two plays ahead all the time. He plays with a lot of pace offensively; moves his feet and gets in on the forecheck. He goes through the neutral zone really quickly; sees options really quickly.

“He does so many good things. He’s a player who will help your team even when he has a bad game.”

The future is still the main focus for the Coyotes, but with Guenther looking like a foundational piece of that future, let’s take a look back at the trade that really jump-started the Coyotes’ rebuild; the one that brought Guenther aboard at the 11th hour.

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Blue skies

July 2021 was a stressful time for Coyotes GM Bill Armstrong. Due to Covid, the virtual NHL Draft was being conducted a month late; on the 23rd and 24th. A scout by trade, Armstrong was about to enter that draft with no first-round pick. The league had stripped that selection and a 2020 second-round pick after determining that former GM John Chayka and his staff had violated the NHL’s combine testing policy.

Due to contractual agreements with his former team, the St. Louis Blues, Armstrong had to sit out his first draft as Coyotes GM in 2020; a draft in which the team had no picks in the first three rounds due to trades and sanctions. The scouting department compounded the problem with the egregious decision to select Mitchell Miller in the fourth-round (the Coyotes later renounced his rights). 

Armstrong was nearly a year into his tenure and he still had no blue-chip assets. He needed a way to turn the tide and really begin a badly needed rebuild. 

On July 17, he acquired depth goalie Josef Kořenář and a 2022 second-round draft pick from San José in exchange for backup goalie Adin Hill and a 2022 seventh-round pick. He also acquired veteran forward Andrew Ladd, a 2021 second-round draft pick, a 2022 second-round draft pick and a 2023 third-round draft pick from the New York Islanders for future considerations.

On July 22, he acquired defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere and 2022 second- and seventh-round picks from Philadelphia for nothing.

Those were helpful building blocks, but one day after the Gostisbehere acquisition, and on the eve of the draft, Armstrong sent shock waves through the NHL when he completed a massive deal that he had been working on for about a year. The Coyotes traded captain/defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and popular forward Conor Garland to Vancouver for aging forwards Loui Eriksson, Antoine Roussel, Jay Beagle, a 2021 first-round pick (No. 9 overall), a 2022 second-round draft pick and a 2023 seventh-round draft pick.

In one fell swoop, Armstrong shed almost all of Ekman-Larsson’s supposedly immovable $8.25 million cap hit (the Coyotes retained 12 percent of the contract through 2028). That pleased the Alex Meruelo ownership group, but by completing the trade, Armstrong gained a commodity equally precious to him: a first-round pick. With that ninth overall selection, the Coyotes chose Guenther, whom The Athletic’s draft analyst, Corey Pronman, had ranked second on his final draft board.  

“That was when the clouds cleared and the skies opened up and the sun started shining,” Armstrong said. “That was the true start of the rebuild.

“It was a pretty complex trade, to be honest with you, but we worked piece by piece for a long time, and one of the huge pieces was getting the first-round pick where we chose Dylan.”

Armstrong wasn’t sure if Guenther would fall as far as No. 9. Aside from Pronman, multiple analysts had the Edmonton Oil Kings forward ranked higher. Although Armstrong would not say where Guenther sat on Arizona’s draft board, he admitted with a vigorous shake of his head that Guenther was higher than No. 9.

“There were two things that really helped us,” Armstrong said. “[Current Coyotes director of pro scouting] Randy Hansch was on our staff and Randy had drafted Dylan into the Western Hockey League. He knew him inside and out and he had known him since he was a boy.

“The second part was that André Tourigny had been part of Team Canada for U18s where Dylan played. We were going through Covid so it wasn’t like anybody was playing a lot of games to give you a good scouting book on them, but we were able to get a good understanding of who this particular young man was because our guys had seen him so much.”

That knowledge base was critical on draft day because the Coyotes scouting staff didn’t have much time to prepare for the about-face in plans.

“The scouts went home to go to sleep before the draft started and I called them about an hour later today and said, ‘Hey, we’re picking at nine,” Armstrong said. “They were like, ‘Well, we’re not going back to sleep then.’ I had kind of given them the heads up that if this trade went through, we needed to be straight on our homework, and they were.

“I knew he had the ability to score. I had an understanding of his hockey sense on both sides of the puck and I knew who he was so I was very comfortable with it.” 

Ten months into his first GM job, Armstrong had set the wheels in motion on a massive overhaul of the Coyotes system by completing a trade that nobody thought was possible.

Nearly three years later, Guenther looks like a critical piece of the rebuild puzzle, and a guy who has cemented a permanent roster spot in the NHL.

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Guenther’s progress

It would be easy for the Coyotes to bring less than 100-percent focus to the ice these days. They have been out of the playoff picture for more than a month and they were officially eliminated on Tuesday when Vegas earned a point. The games are largely meaningless in the overall scheme of things, but they are not meaningless to Guenther.

“You’re always playing for something, no matter who you are,” he said. “You’re playing for next year. People would kill to play the last 15 games in the NHL so don’t take it for granted.”

Guenther’s attitude and his approach to the game have been consistent ever since the Coyotes drafted him. No matter what obstacles he has faced, whether it was being reassigned to the WHL last season or reassigned to the AHL earlier this season, he has used those disappointments as fuel to drive himself to greater heights.

“We knew he would be a slow burn where he needed to build strength and put some weight on,” Armstrong said. “We knew it was going to take time where you’re not gonna plop him right in the NHL, but we saw his hockey sense right away. In his first training camp, you could see the tools. He lit it up. Even when he was leaving camp, we were pretty excited.

“I love his attitude. He’s handled everything extremely well. We try to explain to the kids what we want. Sometimes that’s hard for them to hear because there’s emotion involved for them. But after things settle down, he gets down to work and he gets down to business. Whether it was the time we sent him back to juniors, or the time we sent him back to Team Canada, or the time we send to the minors, he has gone back, listened to what the development staff and coaches were telling him, and he has achieved it.”

Top photo via PHNX Sports’ Danielle Cortez

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