The Arizona Coyotes came into the off-season after a disappointing 22-23 season playing in Mullet arena for 5,000 fans. The Coyotes off-season got off to a poor start after the Tempe Arena deal fell through putting general manager Bill Armstrong in a position where he had to decide on how many big name veterans he would try to acquire and whether or not to run it back with his core guy, Clayton Keller, while banking on the development of the the team’s prospect pool.

Looking at the start of the off-season, the Coyotes did not have any substantial departures from their roster. One could consider the buyout of Zack Kassian an improvement in the team’s offensive ability; however, players like Kassian still do have some value as a penalty killer, in addition to providing an energy role on the team. Armstrong decided that he could find a player of similar value for a lesser price than 3.2 million per year. On the flip side, Armstrong did a great job bringing in some veteran presence with Nick Bjugstad’s return. He slots in and fills out their bottom six along with the addition of Alexander Kerfoot, who fills a similar role for the team. The big highlights of their off-season were the acquisitions of middle-six Winger Jason Zucker and  top-four defenseman Sean Durzi. Through the lens of hockeyprospecting.com, Durzi comes over at the age of 24 following his first star season in the NHL and Zucker comes over at the age of 31 performing at a fringe star level, his best offensive output since 2019. 

In terms of retention, and its value for the Coyotes moving forward, the key of their off-season was the extension of Mattias Maccelli following a breakout star season. Also of note, the retention of Victor Soderstrom as a stay-at-home defender and Juuso Valimaki as their next power play quarterback angles their blue line to be more productive moving forward. I would be remiss to not mention Logan Cooley signing his ELC coming into the 23-24 season, as he is one of the best college hockey prospects we’ve seen in the last 25 years. I am mildly surprised that Armstrong decided to run it back with Vejmelka and Ingram between the pipes this season; however, both goalies get the same pass that Gibson gets from Anaheim. If a goalie is posting a .900 save percentage and a goals against average over 3.00 there is more at play than just shoddy goal-tending traditionally.

  Unfortunately for the Coyotes, if I ended their off-season recap here I would be giving them full marks as a team in a rebuild, but we have to talk about the draft. The coyotes used 2 high first round selections on Dmitri Simashev and Daniil Butt, both of whom were reaches by Central Scouting’s standards and rankings, and in this year’s draft especially, with so many high-end offensive players like Michkov and Benson available when these two respective picks were made, is challenging to evaluate in a positive light. Looking at Simashev’s card, his ceiling in the NHL is most likely comparable to Brooks Orpik or Ruslan Salei, which normally is a good value pick, but in one of the deepest drafts this century, feels like a low value ceiling for a top-10 pick. Daniil But himself is more comparable to Maxime Comtois and Brandon Saad, who again are both physical players that added some value on offense, but when there are high-end offensive players like Perrault and Benson available it is hard to sell a fanbase on a role player with average offensive potential. Looking at their goaltender selections, which they made three of, I did not dislike the Hrabal selection; however, his junior stat comps show him being similar to Eddie Lack (The only NHL-er in his comps) indicating that they spent a second round pick on a goalie who is most likely a back-up of the future. The selection of Musser later in the draft shows more similarity to Phoenix Copley, giving little hope that either of these selections will pan out for a team who is desperate for a number one goaltender. I will say that evaluating goalie development is some kind of witchcraft or voodoo most years, so I am not going to be too critical of these selections. 

Overall, the Arizona Coyotes did a lot of good work building a roster that will be more competitive in the Central division during the 23-24 season while also maintaining 7 million dollars in salary cap space moving forward. My initial instinct would be to give Armstrong a B+ for their off-season even though he didn’t acquire any star players outside of Sean Durzi, but his draft class brought in zero players with more than a 50% probability of panning out to be a star player against hockey prospecting’s models, which leads me to give them a C+ for their off-season. They will absolutely be a  better team in 23-24, but I’m not confident that they’re going to get to a point where they’re going to unseat a team like Dallas or Colorado with the moves they made.

-Christian