2023-24 NHL team preview for the Arizona Coyotes

LAST SEASON

Two words: Mullett Magic. The Coyotes found all kinds of ways to win at their temporary 4,600-seat home in the 2022–23 season, finishing with a 21–15–5 record in their 41 games in Tempe and toppling the likes of Boston, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Colorado, and Vegas along the way. But they also went more than two months without winning a game on the road and ended up finishing with a putrid 7–25–9 record outside Arizona. Talk about home-ice advantage!

The Coyotes might be worse on home ice this season, but they’ll almost certainly be better in away games. They should also benefit from icing a significantly deeper lineup than the one they typically dressed in 2022–23. Gone are the underperforming veterans on their last legs and the AHL placeholders. So long, Zack Kassian, and farewell, Laurent Dauphin—those two forwards combined for just three points in 72 games last year. They’d be nowhere near cracking this revamped Coyotes lineup, which runs 15 strong forwards deep. After finishing 28th in the NHL last year, these Coyotes are ready to be far more competitive in 2023–24, even if the playoffs aren’t quite in their sights.

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions

Logan Cooley, C
Jason Zucker, LW
Matt Dumba, D
Sean Durzi, D
Alex Kerfoot, LW
Nick Bjugstad, C
Troy Stecher, D
Travis Dermott, D
Zach Sanford, LW

Departures

Christian Fischer, RW (DET)
Zack Kassian, RW (UFA)
Patrik Nemeth, D (Switzerland)
Brett Ritchie, RW (UFA)
Connor Mackey, D (NYR)
Laurent Dauphin, C (Switzerland)
Boko Imama, LW (OTT)
Jean-Sebastien Dea (KHL)

OFFENSE

For the most part, last year’s Coyotes were a one-line team. Although they occasionally ran two hot units at once, Arizona relied almost exclusively on the duo of Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz to drive the bus on offense (with Barrett Hayton seamlessly slotting in between those two during the second half of the 2022–23 season).

That’s not to say nobody else chipped in. Matias Maccelli came out of nowhere to lead all rookies in points per game, earning himself a major raise on a three-year contract extension. Lawson Crouse benefited greatly from the young Finn’s playmaking ability and scored a career-best 24 goals in 77 games. But the Coyotes still ended up finishing 28th in the NHL with just 228 goals on the year.

They’ve taken some strides this summer toward changing that. In addition to a top rookie entering the fold (more on him later), the Coyotes signed scoring winger Jason Zucker to a one-year, $5.3 million contract with the expectation that he can replicate his 27-goal output from the 2022–23 season. Additionally, Arizona added Alex Kerfoot and brought back Nick Bjugstad on two-year deals to help out at both ends of the ice. If Maccelli and Schmaltz can stay healthy, and if Hayton can build upon his scorching second half to the 2022–23 campaign, the Coyotes might have one of the better forward groups in the Central Division.

The biggest wild card in all of this is Dylan Guenther, who collected six goals and 15 points in 33 games with the Coyotes in 2022–23 before being returned to the Western Hockey League to finish up the season. Guenther showed he could keep up with the pace of the NHL as a 19-year-old, and there’s a chance he could find himself on a significantly stronger line if he makes the team out of camp again this year. What if, say, Guenther and Maccelli click together? The possible permutations go far beyond that, and we haven’t even mentioned a certain Logan Cooley…

DEFENSE

Neither Matt Dumba nor Sean Durzi is a No. 1 defenseman. The Coyotes surely hope that Dmitri Simashev, who they took with the No. 6 overall pick in this year’s draft, can become that guy in the future, but they’ll have to make do with stop-gap solutions for the time being. It only took one of Arizona’s stockpile of second-round draft picks to snag Durzi from the Los Angeles Kings; Dumba cost nothing but $3.9 million in cap space.

The Coyotes’ defensive group is young, inexpensive, and relatively untested. Dumba has by far the least tread remaining on his tires, having already amassed 598 games over parts of 10 NHL seasons, and even he could rebound in a new environment—similar to Shayne Gostisbehere, perhaps?—after a few down years to close out his tenure with the Minnesota Wild. Durzi, who could quarterback Arizona’s top power-play unit, collected 65 points in 136 games with the Kings before being shown the door in June.

Among those returning from last year’s Coyotes team are J.J. Moser and Juuso Valimaki, both of whom played top-four minutes in 2022–23. Valimaki, a former Calgary Flames first-round pick, led all Coyotes defensemen with 34 points in 78 games after being claimed off waivers last October. Moser established himself as a full-time NHLer in his sophomore campaign and averaged 21:03 of ice time in 82 games. Both are young and competent, if unspectacular. But if 2019 first-round pick Victor Soderstrom can finally separate himself from the pack of veterans (Troy Stecher, Josh Brown, Travis Dermott, et al) at the bottom of the rotation, the Coyotes might just have themselves an effective defensive group.

GOALTENDING

The NHL is increasingly becoming a tandem-oriented league, and the Coyotes have been a driving force behind that shift for years. For whatever reason, Arizona has been a particularly fertile breeding ground for goaltending talent over the last 15-odd years, with skilled netminders often cropping up two or three at a time in the desert. Even after the Coyotes parted ways with Darcy Kuemper, Antti Raanta, and Adin Hill in 2021, they managed to pivot quickly and find effective replacements for no acquisition cost.

Karel Vejmelka was practically a non-entity in the hockey world when the Coyotes signed him as a free agent out of the Czech league in 2021. Although he was generally expected to slot in behind the likes of Carter Hutton and Ivan Prosvetov on the team’s goaltending depth chart in 2021–22, Vejmelka ended up outshining all his peers in training camp and ran away with the starting job. The 27-year-old Vejmelka is one of very few NHL goaltenders who catches with his right hand, and he’s entering the second season of a three-year deal that pays him $2.725 million annually. In 50 games with the Coyotes in 2022–23, Vejmelka went 18–24–6 with a .900 save percentage.

Connor Ingram signed a three-year, $1.95 million extension earlier this summer to remain with the Coyotes through 2026. It’s a nice deal for both the team and the player, the latter getting some well-deserved security less than a year after being waived by the Nashville Predators on the eve of the 2022–23 season. Ingram was a victim of the numbers game in Nashville after the Preds signed a more established goaltender in Kevin Lankinen to back up Juuse Saros. The Coyotes took full advantage of Nashville’s situation and ended up reaping the benefits as Ingram rebounded after a poor start to the season to put up strong numbers down the stretch. Although his 6–13–8 record certainly doesn’t look all that promising, Ingram still managed a .907 save percentage in 27 games. He only just turned 26 in March.

COACHING

Andre Tourigny has earned rave reviews from his players and Coyotes general manager Bill Armstrong since arriving in the desert in 2021, and it’s not hard to see why when looking at the way the team’s top young players have trended under his watch. Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, Lawson Crouse, and Barrett Hayton have all taken sizeable steps forward under Tourigny over the last two seasons. Bjugstad and Stecher, both of whom left Arizona at the 2023 trade deadline, cited Tourigny as a main factor behind their returns to the club as unrestricted free agents.

The Coyotes haven’t done a whole lot of winning under Tourigny to this point, with their 28–40–14 record in 2022–23 being good for just 70 points. But Coyotes management has evidently seen enough in the performance of the team’s coaching staff to pursue extensions for the lot of them, with PHNX Sports’ Craig Morgan reporting earlier this month that Tourigny is expected to officially sign once all of his assistant coaches also agree to terms. Tourigny and his assistants are all under contract through the end of the 2023–24 season.

ROOKIES

Welcome to the Logan Cooley show. The 19-year-old center turned pro with the Coyotes in July after initially committing to return to the University of Minnesota for his sophomore season. Cooley might be the only player in this year’s rookie class who can truly rival Connor Bedard in the Calder Trophy conversation—actually, just watch, some random 23-year-old will come out of nowhere to win it—and he very easily could’ve won the Hobey Baker Award last year after scoring 60 points in 39 games as a freshman with the Golden Gophers. It just so happened that Adam Fantilli got in his way.

The Montreal Canadiens might end up regretting not taking Cooley with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft. He’s a dynamic puck-handler with speed to burn, and he can drive a line. Cooley’s unit with Matthew Knies and Jimmy Snuggerud very nearly carried Minnesota to the National Championship in 2023. If the Coyotes truly aspire to be a playoff team in the near future, Cooley will be the guy to lift them there.

Two other Calder-eligible players who could break into the NHL with the Coyotes this year are defenseman Michael Kesselring and goaltender Ivan Prosvetov, both of whom made cameos with the team in 2022–23. Kesselring is a big guy with a great shot who came over from Edmonton in the Nick Bjugstad deadline deal; Prosvetov has started with AHL Tucson for four years but has yet to find much consistency at any level in North America. Both players come with many more question marks than Cooley does.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. Cooley or Hayton on the top line? It wouldn’t seem to make much sense to break up the Keller–Hayton–Schmaltz trio, but then again, prospects of Cooley’s caliber don’t exactly grow on trees. Picking between two centers drafted with top-five picks is a pretty good choice to be able to make. The Coyotes will probably elect to keep last year’s top line together to start the 2023–24 season, but they’re not going to stop Cooley from staking his claim to the No. 1 center role if he’s ready for it.

2. Is Vejmelka really the guy in net? When he’s on, Karel Vejmelka is a formidable goaltender. His biggest issue over his two full NHL seasons has been with maintaining that level of play over a full season. Vejmelka took a huge step back after the All-Star break in his rookie year and experienced a similar if less dramatic, regression as a sophomore. He’ll need to better adapt to the grind that is a starting goaltender’s workload in the NHL if he wants to fend off tandem partner Connor Ingram for playing time. Luckily for both, top prospect Michael Hrabal is a long way off.

3. Who rides shotgun with Maccelli? Last year, Lawson Crouse occupied that role and fared pretty well. But will Jason Zucker, with his superior pedigree as a top-six winger, slide into that spot and push Crouse down the lineup? How about Dylan Guenther, fresh off a WHL championship and the golden goal at the World Juniors? Could Alex Kerfoot spend time on Maccelli’s line? In any event, the Coyotes will need to ensure they identify the best candidate to run in tandem with their best pure playmaker.

PREDICTION

These Coyotes need to keep taking things one season at a time. They’re only starting to reap the rewards of their slow-build strategy under Armstrong’s management team, and they can’t afford to get too far ahead of themselves.

This could be a pivotal year for the long-term future of the entire franchise. A concrete update on the team’s arena situation is expected sometime around New Year’s, and good news on that front for fans in the desert could very well coincide with the team taking significant steps forward on the ice—which, considering all the additions they’ve made, is to be expected.

The Coyotes finished seventh in the Central Division last year, ahead of only Chicago. We don’t expect the Hawks to leapfrog the Coyotes at this point. However, we could envision Arizona catching up with the Nashville Predators and/or the St. Louis Blues, and perhaps even the Winnipeg Jets if things go sour there. From our standpoint, it’s a little bold to say they’ll surpass all three, but, just for kicks, we’ll say the Coyotes overtake Nashville and draw just about even with St. Louis with around 86 points, good to finish either fifth or sixth place in the Central.