Arizona Coyotes 2023-24 NHL Season Preview

Arizona Coyotes 2023-24 NHL Season Preview

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Arizona Coyotes didn’t make the playoffs last season. In fact, they didn’t even come close. Since reaching the 2012 Western Conference Final, the Coyotes have finished in the conference’s top half exactly zero times. If not for taking advantage of the expanded 2020 playoff format, Arizona wouldn’t have a single playoff game to its name in the last 11 seasons. That presents a pretty bleak picture, and that’s before you consider they’re entering a second season of playing in front of 4,600 fans at Arizona State’s Mullett Arena.

The Coyotes have been in a perpetual rebuild for the last decade. Things aren’t exactly different entering 2023-24. Few if any are expecting them to make a serious run at a playoff spot. But after some promising developments last season and a hodge podge of free-agent additions, what the Coyotes do on the ice actually matters this season. They don’t have to be perfect. They don’t even have to have a playoff team. But tangible team progress is a must for the Coyotes this season.

Line Combinations (Via Daily Faceoff)

New Faces

Of the six players listed as new additions above, two are familiar faces in Arizona. Nick Bjugstad and Troy Stecher both started last year with the Coyotes, playing 120 combined games for the club. They’re back on one-year deals to flesh out the team’s depth.

Among Arizona’s five main free-agent signings, Alexander Kerfoot is the lone player to receive a contract longer than one year. Kerfoot became fairly maligned by the end of his time in Toronto, where he never lived up the offensive upside he flashed in his first two seasons in Colorado. Still, he’s a versatile forward who can play center and the wing and contribute on both the power-play and penalty-kill. Mathew Dumba fits in a similar image, trying to get his career back on track after his time in Minnesota ran its course. After a few years as a sleeper Norris candidate, Dumba’s role decreased a bit last season (his TOI was down almost two minutes) and he put up a mere 14 points. He’s a classic low-risk, medium-reward veteran signing.

Jason Zucker is probably the most well-known of Arizona’s additions. Last season was a huge year for Zucker, who had struggled since arriving in Pittsburgh at the 2020 trade deadline. He rediscovered his scoring touch, driving play in the offensive zone and turning 27 goals, the second-best mark of his career. But don’t sleep on Sean Durzi. The 24-year-old is coming off a breakout 38-point season and plays a smooth two-way style. He’ll probably work his way into at least a top-four role sooner rather than later.

Three Players to Watch

1. Logan Cooley — Rarely is the third overall pick of a draft a “steal,” but Cooley may be the exception to that rule. He and Adam Fantilli were the only players in the NCAA to crack the 60-point threshold last year. Not bad for a couple of freshmen. Cooley is a do-it-all center with elite upside. Apologies to Shane Doan, but Cooley legitimately has a chance to be the best player in franchise history. It will be exciting to see what his first step looks like.
2. Jusso Välimäki — Claimed off of waivers from Calgary last season, Valimaki rediscovered the promise he showed before tearing his ACL in 2019. On a Coyotes team not exactly stacked with offensive talent, he managed to chip in 34 points with a respectable play-driving profile to boot. The 24-year-old is already a major success story as is, but if he could take another step forward, Arizona’s future blue line suddenly looks quite a bit brighter.
3. Dylan Guenther — Overshadowed a bit by some of the team’s other young players, Guenther didn’t quite look ready for prime time in his 33-game NHL debut last season. But that’s perfectly understandable out of a 20-year-old jumping into the show straight from junior. Guenther still figures to be a big part of Arizona’s return to relevance; expect him to show why this season.

Riser & Faller

Riser: Arizona appears to have found a diamond in the rough in 2018 fourth-rounder Matias Maccelli. The Finn followed up a strong 57-point AHL campaign in 2021-22 (in just 47 games) by scoring nearly as much in not even a full season’s worth of NHL contests. Not only did Maccelli emerge as a dynamite playmaker, but he ranked in the 85th percentile in defensive play-driving, according to The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn. Putting him next to Clayton Keller or/and Cooley seems like a great recipe to build off that success in his sophomore.

Faller: A breakout senior season at Boston College in 2021-22 elevated the hype of Jack McBain. His rookie season in the NHL wasn’t bad, but he was definitely overshadowed by some of his first-year teammates. McBain will turn 24 in January, so while he’s still fairly young, he’s also nearing the danger point where he’s too old to be considered a prospect. That’s fine if he can build off his performance last year. But a 26-point season with poor underlying numbers won’t cut it this time around.

The Big Question

What does a successful season look like for the Arizona Coyotes? Further developing Cooley, Maccelli, Guenther and Victor Söderström is certainly the most important place to start. The Coyotes are still focusing on their future, but they’ve got an eye on the on-ice product this year. Arizona is nearing the critical point of a rebuild where you can start to tell whether or not it’s going to succeed. Teams that failed like the early-2010s Oilers and mid-2010s Sabres spun their wheels at this stage. Teams that didn’t, like the mid-2010s Maple Leafs and early-2020s Kings, took the leap to playoff status at this stage. Arizona doesn’t need to be that good for this season to be a step in the right direction. But it’ll be concerning if their season points total doesn’t at least start with an eight.

The Verdict

The West is wide open this year, so never say never. But, no disrespect to Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz, the Coyotes don’t have the horsepower to compete with the big boys, or probably the teams in the tier right below them. However, this Arizona Coyotes team needs to show its fans that the far too great degree of suffering they’ve experienced is at least closing in on a payoff. That also can’t hurt their odds of securing a long-term future somewhere in the state.

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Advanced Stats via Natural Stat Trick and MoneyPuck.com; Contracts via CapFriendly