Look friends, I don't know how much stock you're supposed to put into the pre-season, especially when you're already a bad NHL team and aren't dressing your best lineups.
So, probably none.
But, maybe some.
Fact: The Coyotes will be a bad to horrible team this year.
Fact el Deuceo: The Coyotes are 0-4 in the pre-season and have scored only four goals.
So here's my takeaway: The team has nothing to lose, except fans. For a team that only decided not to try and make the Playoffs less than a year ago, they have a ton of high to highish-end prospects. They have one of the NHL's best defencemen going into what should historically be his best season (age 24), and an adequate (at worst) goalie and tons of cap space.
I can't call those facts, but I think they're close enough to being facts that we can act on them. So what I propose then, is to ignore the traditional or accepted way of building a team.
Realize that even if you do follow the "lose for a while and draft high" philosophy , your chances of winning a Cup are low anyways. That at least warrants consideration of an alternate approach.
Also consider that you only have a one in five chance to get the first overall pick if you finish last and that you could end up picking fourth where the odds of picking a star player aren't even 50%.
The Coyotes seem destined to ice a team with outdated veterans over youth, defensive defensemen, grinders and even an enforcer. This doesn't work in today's NHL, it won't work for the Coyotes and they'll finish last employing it, then have a better than 50% chance of drafting fourth and ending up with a dud.
With all that in mind, the Coyotes should do the following:
1. Immediately cut Grossmann, Scott, Vitale and Gordon from the roster.
2. Set their current roster like this, for now:
Duclair- Strome - Domi Boedker - Hanzal - Downie Rieder - Samuelsson - Doan Chipchura - Vermette - Richardson That to me is the best possible iteration of what the Coyotes currently have, but it's still crap, so trades need to be made. Boedker, Downie, Hanzal, Doan (sorry) and Vermette should all be either traded or at least in consideration of being moved to make room for the more talented players the club has to be looking to acquire.
They don't all need to go and in fact I'm at least somewhat of a fan of all of them, but room needs to be made.
3. Trade for two top-six NHL players, using prospect capital, cap room and the aforementioned disposable players.
Candidates: James Van Riemsdyk, Jeff Skinner and either Staal are four who immediately jump to mind, but the key should be to target teams not looking to compete this year and offer the Coyotes' 2017 first-rounder, the NYR first rounder next year and some of the prospects like Perlini and Dvorak.
The Coyotes have the capital to bring two top-six forwards no problem, they just have to get creative.
4. Improve Defense. The Coyotes have three D I like and would keep (OEL, Stone, Murphy).
I can live with Michalek. Not saying Dahlbeck and Elliott can't be good, but to compete this defense needs better players. So they should try to trade for a young defensemen off the Wild, the Flyers or the Ducks - all teams looking to compete who seem to have an excess of young defensemen.
That will be a good start, but it isn't enough because they need a true top pairing guy to partner with OEL.
It is said it's very hard to acquire one of those players, but last year the Islanders picked up two on the same day, so the Coyotes should put it out there that they'll trade their #1 pick in 2016 for a defensemen who either is or projects to be one of the games elite rearguards.
The Coyotes have the capital, the cap room and - I think - the proper reading on the risk/reward chart to move ahead with an aggressive remodeling of the team. Their current plan is safe, boring, uncreative and unlikely to work even if everything goes well. So why not go a little crazy? The salary cap has redefined how you should build a team and I think an aggressive rebuild strategy could work in today's NHL - especially when everyone is so weary about playing kids and wasting ECLs.
With the right aggressive moves and a realization that speed and youth can win in this league if you use it right, the Coyotes could ice a very good team almost right away and the worst case scenario: they lose but sell a lot of tickets because they're fun to watch.
Thanks for reading.