Tyler Yaremchuk was joined by Frank Seravalli to discuss the latest Arizona Coyotes situation on the most recent episode of Daily Faceoff Live.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Today’s focus is the Arizona Coyotes, Frank. They’re a fascinating team to look at as you look ahead to the offseason because who knows if they’re still going to be the Arizona Coyotes this offseason, which is obviously a massive question mark. Let me just ask you this under the hypothetical that they’re still in the desert. If they’re still in Arizona, is there any reason to believe with all their cap space and draft picks that they start to be more aggressive?
Frank Seravalli: Well, they already were aggressive last year. I mean, they went out and signed Matt Dumba and Jason Zucker and traded for Sean Durzi and the goal was to be knocking on the door of the playoffs, they wanted to be in this race that we’re talking about right now to create some buzz in their marketplace. That didn’t work out, that’s a team that sunk like a stone in the standings since the calendar year turned over, they had a competitive start to the year and really faded fast.
Now, I saw a couple of diehard Yotes fans tweeting me in the last day or two about something I said on the DFO Rundown earlier this week which was that here are a couple of their pending free agents and they don’t have a single NHL defenseman under contract for next season. And people said “oh, stick to what you know” I’m telling you for 100% fact, and please listen closely, that the Coyotes haven’t had the ability financially to extend contract offers to players. Not that they don’t want to keep them but there’s obviously something going on behind the scenes which we know is this arena situation.
They’re not entirely certain what this picture looks like so they haven’t been given the green light to go out and make offers, that’s a fact. Now, what happens from here and how it all plays out I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t tell you but there’s a lot of machinations behind the scenes and a lot of investigating to try to figure out where this all goes. But there’s a reason they traded away Dumba and Zucker and didn’t retain which worsened their return because they needed to get that money off their books.
So, it’s just a small window into what the Coyotes are dealing with behind the scenes, trying to keep this all going. It sort of looks fine above water but beneath it they’re paddling furiously.
You can watch the rest of the episode here:
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