The Coyotes don't have any major free-agents to sign. Usually the top priority of an NHL team in the off season is to sign their free-agents.
For the Coyotes, that's not really an issue.
Their RFA list is: Illya Lyubushkin Josh Archibald, Nick Cousins and Lawson Crouse.
None of these guys is an automatic re-sign.
The goal for the next few posts is to decide what, if anything to do with these guys.
Let us first look at Josh Archibald.
He will be 27 when the season starts.
In this his second season with Arizona, he scored 12 goals in 68 games.
He had a 44% CF, and played most of his minutes with Crouse. Most of the players he played with had better Cori-For percentages without him.
Archibald was negative in not only Corsi percentage, but also shots, scoring chances and goals -for percentage.
He was also relative negative to his team.
He scored a pretty crappy 1.3 points per sixty.
Stats from naturalstattrick.com
Basically, Josh Archibald is a guy who performed badly on one of the worst teams in the NHL, which, if you take away the absolutely fantastic goaltending of Darcy Kuemper, is exactly what they were.
Archibald probably wouldn't have played in so many games - or any? - if the Coyotes were not absurdly injured for the entire season.
So he's a pending RFA.........I would not re-sign him. Even as a depth option, he doesn't seem to be all that great.
No offense, no defense, just a halfway decent hockey player lucky enough to get a taste of the show. We should all be so lucky.
Now I suppose that since he has no history of success and doesn't seem to be very good, that the Coyotes will lock him up for six years, but they really shouldn't.
My recommendation is to buy yourself a nice, moderately priced denim jacket, pour yourself a glass of wine, sit out the deck, have a smoke or two, listen to some REM and do not sign Josh Archibald.
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