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Some Positives for the Coyotes Playoff Chances |
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Last year the Coyotes missed the playoffs by 2 points (3 technically, since Dallas owned the tie breaker) and while Jason Spezza is apparently enough to make the Stars Cup contenders, the Coyotes are unanimously being predicted to miss the playoffs by all the "experts." So, in today's blog, we'll talk about three ways the Coyotes can actually improve and give themselves a good shot at making the playoffs.
1) Internal Improvement
The experts just do not account for internal improvement. Get a new splashy player? Your team gets hyped and is a shoe in to win it all (See Dallas, Anaheim, Minnesota).
But, if your team doesn't get any hyped up off season pick ups, the "experts" won't recognize the ability for teams to improve internally.
In fact, if you look at the majority of pre-season predictions, they usually just pick last year's standing to repeat with some slight changes, usually a hyped up team (Dallas) moving up and some other hyped in the opposite direction team moving down (Colorado is a popular choice here).
So, most everyone has the Coyotes missing the playoffs, but they don't account for the following: OEL is getting better. Already a top 10 NHL Defenseman, he is on his to improving until he's the best in the league. As the Coyotes best player and at the age of 23 he is only scratching the surface so far. Look for a huge jump in play this season.
Then we have Boedker and Hanzal, both of whom I wrote about in my last column. Hanzal is one of the biggest centres in the NHL and Boedker is one of the fastest players. Both players are going to improve over last year, because their age and development curves are coinciding nicely with a chance to get more ice time in better situations.
Then we have a trio of defenseman: Stone, Murphy and Gormley. Stone has a crazy hard shot from the point and only Yandle and OEL stand in his way from perhaps being a legit power-play threat. He also happens to be 6'3 220 and good defensively and 24 years old. A defense built around him and OEL would be something to drool over, but there's more.
Murphy is another two way defenseman who is huge. He is 21. He might not even be on the team to start the year due only to numbers, but he is very, very good and a blue-chip top four NHL dman.
Finally, we have Brandon Gormley who is the Coyotes most ready for Prime Time prospect. This is a kid who is 21, already has 2 AHL seasons under his belt and is potentially a number 1 NHL defenseman. Most NHL teams are happy to add one top 4 NHL defenseman to their lineup. The Coyotes can look to add 3. (Stone played 70 games last year, but was only in the top four near the end of the season).
These 5 players, plus OEL, plus Domi all stand to be a significant part of the Coyotes season and all of them are going to be better than they were last year. If there is another NHL team with 5 or 6 impact players set to take on bigger roles, or just improve significantly from last season, I don't know of it. For this reason alone, the Coyotes should get a little more love in the pre-season predictions.
I do, however, get it. Internal improvement is not something you can bank on or measure. Neither is external improvement, but that, at least, is exciting so it gets more attention. The Coyotes will surprise everyone this year, and not adjusting expectations to reflect internal improvement will be the reason why.
2) Mike Smith.
Last season, Smith was OK. He put up a .915 save % and a .265 GAA, neither of which was good enough to place him in the top 10 of a category. Smith can and will be better, as the team will have improved defense and Vermette hopefully won't be forced into a scoring role, thus giving them back their premier shut-down centre.
Despite the pedestrian stats, Smith was pretty good after Christmas and looked to be heating up after the Olympic break when he went down with an injury.
If you lose your possibly most important player for the last month and still only miss the playoffs by 3 points - not to mention a bizarre losing streak to end the year - then I think it's reasonable to assume that if healthy those points can easily be made up.
A healthy Smith playing in 65 games should make the Coyotes a shoe in for the second season. While not everyone loves him, very few goalies are as consistent year-to-year as he has been for the last several seasons.
3) Overtime/Shootout
One thing that really gave me nightmares about last season and only missing the playoffs by such a small margin was the Coyotes shootout record.
Say what you want about the Coyotes, but they didn't get to play late into April for one reason, and that reason was their horrendous luck after 60 minutes were up. Even with Smith's injury and the losing streak that entailed, they still should have made it.
The Coyotes lost 7 games in Overtime and 8 in the shootout. That is 15 points they gave away in the extra frame. The thing about overtime is that it's entirely based on luck. You could flip a coin at the start of each session and reward the point that way and the results would no more reflect the reality of who is the better team.
Playing 4-4 the Coyotes by all rights should have an advantage over most teams since they can ice one of Yandle or OEL for the entire time and that should lead to puck possession and scoring chances. But the fact is, the open ice and limited time and first goal wins rules make it so that OT is basically a toss up.
Furthermore, the shoot-out is even more luck based, since the goalie will still save the puck most of the time, and just about everyone in the NHL is good at skating in on a goalie with no defenseman trying to knock their teeth out. With 15 points given away in the shootout and OT, the Coyotes, with a little luck could have finished ahead of Dallas, or even Minnesota or LA.
Just to put the whole OT thing in perspective, the Flames were the NHL's best OT last year almost doubling the Coyotes win % in extra time and they were a much worse team.
So there you have it, 3 reasons to the Coyotes can hope to make up those pesky 3 points that saw them miss the playoffs.
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