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Coyotes Not Rebuilding Anymore (Secretly Contenders)

June 17, 2018, 1:06 PM ET [86 Comments]
James Tanner
Washington Capitals Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
A lot of people were confused about yesterday's Galchenyuk for Domi trade.

Galchenyuk is 24 and Domi is 23. Galchenyuk costs more and has two years left on his deal. Last year, the Coyotes traded the #7th overall pick for a 29 year old goalie and a 27 year old centre.

What is going on?

The Coyotes finished 29th overall last year - shouldn't they be rebuilding?

Well no, not exactly.



The Coyotes didn't win a regulation time game last year for almost their first 20 games. They were eliminated from playoff contention by November. Now, losing 20 games is terrible, but it's also not something you could do if you tried. It's a complete fluke in that no team is THAT bad.

Then add in a rash of injuries that no team could overcome and you have a lost season, despite a secretly good roster.

What happened was that they played half of the season without their starting goalie, and two of their three best defenseman. With 101 man games lost between Raanta, Chychrun and Hjalmarsson, the Coyotes were screwed. The 1st place Predators wouldn't have done much better if Subban, Josi and Rinne combined to miss 101 games.

Funny enough, the Coyotes had a decent second half to the season where they went 20-14-7 for the final 41 games. That is a 96 point pace that puts them in the 8th seed. And some of that record includes games without Hajalmarsson and Raanta.

Considering their MR. Burns Softball team-like injuries in the first half, the fact that their backup goalies were unbelievably bad (they now have Kuemper, one of the best back-ups in the NHL) and they had a new coach, it's reasonable to put more emphasis on the second half of the year.

The Coyotes have Annti Raanta, potentially one of the NHL's best goalies. They have a blue line consisting of Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Nik Hjalmarsson, Jacob Chychrun, Jason Demers and Alex Goligoski. Kevin Connauton and Luke Schenn make up a pretty solid 6/7 too if they bring them back.

It's one of the best blue lines in the NHL.

Their three centres could be Stepan-Strome- Galchenyuk. Other teams are better, but overall that's a very solid 1-2-3 punch. Clayton Keller is poised to breakout.

Fischer, Panik, Dvorak, Kruger and Perlini are a decent set of wingers, but the Coyotes have the cap space and the prospect depth to improve their roster from here.

They have picks coming up in the 1st, 2nd (Wild), 3rd (Their own, Flames, Hurricanes), 6th and 7th.

They have $18 million in cap space and the cap is poised to go up by about $5 million. Plus that doesn't include the $5 million that goes on LTIR for Bolland. So they have almost $30 million to spend, if they want.

If you look at their current roster (a playoff team for 41 games once healthy last year), their off season additions (Kruger and Galchenyuk), their internal improvements (Keller and Strome) as well as their cap situation and the draft picks and prospects they can use as capital, it's easy to make the case that no team is more poised to move up in the standings than the Coyotes.

The playoffs seem a certainty. Given a couple improvements sure to be made based on the cap space and trade assets available, there seems to be no reason why the Coyotes couldn't be legit Contenders next season. (Especially in a league where an expansion team and a team who had the worst offseason in the league just played for the Cup).

In Arizona the name of the game is optimism.
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