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Coyotes players, coach redefine success in the grand plan with tanking, personal goals at odds.
By Marc Antoine Godin Feb 11, 2023
It was early in the summer of 2021 and André Tourigny was in his fifth and final interview to become the head coach of the Arizona Coyotes. The Ottawa 67’s coach and VP of hockey operations had two Zoom interviews with general manager Bill Armstrong before a third with him in person, and then a fourth with Xavier Gutierrez, the team president.
For the last meeting, the entire Coyotes staff was there, including owner Alex Meruelo.
The crucial issue of leading a team in the context of a rebuild was addressed, of course.
Meruelo wanted to know how Tourigny would deal with the Coyotes’ goal of racking up draft picks.
“I said to the owner, if the lineup is too good and we win too many games, talk to Bill about it,” Tourigny told The Athletic. “I must do the best I can with what you are going to give me.”
The Coyotes started 2023 with a nine-game losing streak. It would be easy to look at the results and believe that it’s all part of Armstrong’s plan to maximize his team’s chances of winning the lottery and drafting Connor Bedard.
It’s Armstrong’s problem if the Coyotes win too many games and can’t draft Bedard, but it’s Tourigny’s if the team doesn’t improve or stops responding to his direction. Tourigny was hired to make the executives’ plan work, not sabotage what is slowly being built.
The Yotes have bounced back lately, picking up eight points out of 12 in their last six games.
As soon as Tourigny started the job, the players realized that he was not kidding. His boss might not have short-term playoff hopes, but Tourigny was going to do everything in his power to win.
“He’s an intense guy, but at the end of the day, he always has your back and he truly does want to see everyone get better,” star forward Clayton Keller explained. “And it’s not like he holds onto grudges for unnecessarily long. It’s like, alright, it’s a new day, you messed up, but it’s over. And I think he definitely holds us accountable as well. He’s been great so far.”
When they say that tanking plans are limited to the executives and that they do not penetrate the dressing room walls, Tourigny makes a striking example.
“Nobody tanks,” commissioner Gary Bettman said in January. “Our players and coaches do their best to win. And again, just because you may finish with the worst record in the league you’ve got something like a 75 percent chance that you’re not going to get the first pick.”
Nobody tanks, everybody tanks. This season, in particular, has revealed that tanking can be tempting for a front office while being despised by players and coaches.
Armstrong argues that there is a difference between tanking and rebuilding and that his team is following the latter path. So what is the difference between trying to get weaker and not trying to get better?
Shortly before Christmas, the Coyotes hosted the Buffalo Sabres at Mullett Arena at Arizona State University. The arena barely seats 4,600, and yet there are several empty seats for this game. There is some of that intimate, festive atmosphere that was promised as a counterpoint to the argument that Mullett is an inadequate NHL venue, and the roar after each Coyotes goal sure sounds professional (if such a thing exists), but this is not one of those nights where the visiting team helps create a buzz. That’s what happens when two teams have been in the dumpster for so long.
In 2015 they had both hoped to finish last and draft Connor McDavid. The Sabres wound up dead last in the NHL while the Coyotes, despite winning only eight of their last 42 games, finished two points ahead.
The lottery gods chose the Edmonton Oilers that year, and while the Sabres got Jack Eichel as a consolation prize, the Coyotes settled on Dylan Strome, who wasn’t exactly the same calibre player, with the third pick in the draft.
Eight years on, both teams have different GMs, the Sabres have finally pulled themselves out of the dumps, and the Coyotes, still entangled in a unique economic environment, are back to square one.
Armstrong watches Buffalo skate during warm-up and says he learned a lesson from these Sabres.
“They probably did it two times where the Reinharts of the world and all those guys came in there, and they never really flourished in Buffalo,” he said. “These rebuilds tend to take longer than people think. And just because you make the playoffs out of a rebuild doesn’t mean you’re done with the rebuild. So there’s a little bit of patience, and one thing is not to force it.”
The Coyotes are also tying the assembly of a competitive team with the construction of a new arena in Tempe – on land that has yet to be decontaminated – and it’s ambitious, to say the least. The synchronism between the two projects will have a thousand opportunities to go off the rails. But since the Coyotes won’t really generate revenue in their three or four seasons at Mullett Arena, they must continue to keep the payroll low and hoard draft picks. They are holding off until the moment that spending will be justified.
Maybe it’s because of Bedard or that the salary cap hasn’t budged and forced several teams to wave the white flag. But everyone – general managers, coaches and players – seems to have a more clear-headed look than before at what they’re going through.
“I read this quote the other day and it really resonated with me,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said earlier this season about what veteran goalie Jake Allen brings to his team. “You need guys that are willing to plant trees knowing they’ll never sit in the shade. You need guys like that.”
Only the youngest and most talented Coyotes will ever enjoy some shade in the Arizona desert. That’s why explaining his intentions to the players was the hardest part of Armstrong’s job. The GM is aware of the brevity of their careers and the fact that he cannot ask them to mortgage too big a part of it.
“What was very clear between Bill and me from the beginning is that we aren’t leading our players on,” Tourigny said. “Players don’t want that, and it’s important to be honest and transparent. When we arrived this year, that’s exactly what Bill said to the players in the first meeting: ‘we’re going on the road, (Mullett Arena) isn’t ready, it’s tough, there’s our payroll, but that’s the reality. That said, here is how we want to do things.”
The Coyotes made their case to the players as considerately as possible, and only Jakob Chychrun decided that it wasn’t for him. Their top defenseman has been on the trade market ever since.
“I think every guy’s different,” Keller said about Chychrun. “For me, I just want to continue to develop and be the best player that I can be. And usually, when you focus on that, good things happen.
“‘Chicks’ is one of my best friends since we’re very young. We played together in the summer growing up, and I’ve been around him a lot, and he definitely wants to win. And I’m not gonna sit here and say anything’s wrong or right. That’s just what he felt he needed.”
Armstrong knows that several teams would like to acquire Chychrun and he will not settle for less than his ideal return. There is no rush to trade him because he has two more seasons left on his contract. He can afford to be patient and Chychrun has ensured his value hasn’t fallen.
Chychrun has 28 points through 36 games this season and is one of only two Coyotes regulars to post a plus differential. The other is center Nick Bjugstad and the Coyotes will surely find a buyer for him by the trade deadline. Bjugstad is one of many veterans who took advantage of a good opportunity to boost their value in Arizona and he is having his best season in five years.
Last season, having Andrew Ladd, Antoine Roussel and Anton Stralman, veterans on the back nine of their career, was a great benefit for the young Coyotes.
Ladd made a particularly strong impression. Instead of yelling something in the moment, he would wait a few days before making a suggestion to a teammate. He could take a younger player for a coffee to talk to him about his experiences.
“Having him around our group, at that time, I think was unbelievable,” remembers Keller. “He’s a great leader, a champion, and he’s kind of been through all the ups and downs. And I think he really helped out me, Lawson Crouse, everyone in general. And especially with our team, I think we’ve grown a lot, and Bear kind of wanted us to follow his lead.”
A rebuilding team has to have that sort of voice. Because a good culture is like goaltending: it’s when you don’t have it that you really feel it.
In 2015, the Coyotes and Sabres were two of three NHL teams to play below .400. This year, five teams have hovered below that threshold. The elbows are up in the back of the bus. They all dream about Bedard and they are not looking for short-term solutions.
But they are not tanking in the same way.
The Chicago Blackhawks carried out the least subtle tank job by disposing of players before the season began. The Anaheim Ducks have been unexpectedly bad. The Columbus Blue Jackets sustained serious injuries to key players.
The Coyotes say they’re rebuilding, and Armstrong sees a difference between them and the Blackhawks.
“I think that what we do have on this particular team is we’ve got some good foundations, whether it’s Crouse or Keller, or Schmaltz or Moser or Guenther or Maccelli, even Chicks or Vejmelka, there’s some good pieces there,” he said. “So it’s not like we’re right to the scorched earth and there’s nothing there. I think teams are really surprised when we play them. It’s an interesting group. But they’re still assets.
“Also, we walked out of that draft last year with three first-rounders. We’ll see in the end how good are (those) picks, but if we could have another couple of drafts like that, it’s gonna restock the franchise and put us in a really, really good shape.”
In their defence, the majority of the trades Armstrong has made, which might look like weakening the team, have actually helped free the payroll of Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Conor Garland and Christian Dvorak, three high-earning underperformers.
They took on Shayne Gostisbehere, who should provide good value over the next few months, but it’s clear Arizona won’t be spending until their rebuild is complete.
If that can get them Bedard in the next draft, great. But Armstrong says he didn’t singularly focus on finishing last.
“Yes you can pick high at the draft and you can change your franchise when you pick McDavid, but McDavid is a once every 12 years,” Armstrong pointed out. “So you’ve got to be extremely lucky at the draft to get a player like that. But I also believe the harder you work, the luckier you get at the draft. The better your scouting staff is, the more odds you got to be lucky.”
The Coyotes’ strategy is not just all-in-for-Bedard, it also centers on the volume of picks. Of course, they hope to draft Bedard, but Armstrong’s scouts have a smaller margin for error given the organization’s situation. The Coyotes need to maximize the chances of their draft picks paying off.
In the middle of the third period, Sabres star Tage Thompson scores the winning goal on a power play. The St. Louis Blues picked Thompson at No. 26 in the 2016 draft and traded him to Buffalo two years later in the Ryan O’Reilly deal. Armstrong was the Blues’ head scout when Thompson was drafted.
He says Thompson is precisely the kind of find that his scouts have to dig up.
“That’s the only way you’re gonna win,” Armstrong said. “You’ve got to draft impact, and sometimes your impact, you don’t have the ability to get that high, but with a good scouting staff and hard work and grinding, you should be able to squeeze out good players.”
Armstrong had convinced his boss to trade a third-round pick to the Washington Capitals to move the Blues up two spots in the draft. In their eyes, Thompson was the last available prospect with the potential to be a top-6 forward in the NHL. The cost was worth it.
With 18 picks in the first three rounds over the next three drafts, the Coyotes GM won’t hesitate to take those shots to improve his position.
It’s the final minutes of the game and Tourigny is animated behind the bench. They are only down a goal. The coach wants to win. He wants to instill this mentality now for when the Coyotes are truly competitive.
“I don’t compare us to Chicago or Anaheim, I compare us to Boston, Tampa, Colorado,” he said. “It’s them that we want to follow, that’s what we want to be.”
Tourigny does not spare them at practice. He skillfully wields the carrot and the stick with the aim of establishing what he calls a “championship attitude.”
A season and a half after hiring him, Armstrong is still very pleased with his choice.
“I think he’s special because he can be hard when he has to, be firm and be respected, but at the same time, he can turn around the next day and be joking with the player,” Armstrong said. “There’s not many coaches that can do that.”
Hiring a coach with extensive experience in the junior ranks, in addition to his previous stints in the NHL, made perfect sense for a team destined to depend on youth for a few more years. However, Tourigny admits that he has not always had a touch for speaking to the younger players.
“What matters as a coach is, it’s not about what you need,” he said. “If I give it to a player and it’s not what the player needs, what’s the use? None. My goal is to win or to get the best from the player. I can’t do whatever I would like to do. My first instinct is to be nasty, but that’s not my job. So I have to know the temperament of each player.
“One of the most false things in the world is to say ‘speak to others the way you would like them to speak to you.’ That’s not true! I am frank and direct. You can tell me I’m a so-and-so, that’s okay. It won’t hurt me. But there are others, if you talk to them like that, you crush them.
“On the other hand, if you tell me, ‘Hey, we should do this, it’s going to be fun,’ that doesn’t work for me at all. I have to talk to everyone in a way that will get them going.”
His general manager is thinking about the future. Tourigny has to get everything out of those who are here today.
That’s not easy when there are so few wins, when a December game against the Sabres in which they led twice ended in a 5-2 loss.
But where Tourigny and the Coyotes’ senior management overlap in their challenges is that they must convince players that the oasis in the distance is not a mirage. The coach needs to keep the players confident that the on-ice improvement process is the right one, and management needs to reassure them that the dream of a new permanent home is real.
In the long run, if some players end up believing that it’s all just a mirage, Chychrun won’t be alone in wanting to try something else.
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