Howl of a Good Time

Coyotes continue to tweak their roster

After the draft, the TUFHL Coyotes felt pretty good about their future.  The plan was to create cap space and then use it for players deemed to have bad contracts, and get incentives to take on those contracts, to continue to build up the stock in their cupboard.

"Yeah that was the plan.  But there are so many teams with cap space, that it made it harder to do deals like we wanted.  That and a lot of teams weren't looking to deal those types of contracts with an incentive attached".  

"We were able to add guys like Doughty and Subban and that really solidified our back end.  Towards the middle of pre-season, we looked at the standings and realized, hey, we might be able to have a shot at making the playoffs, because the Pacific seems to be an open race.  So we changed our gameplan and made some trades to see if we couldn't be a dark horse to make the playoffs in the regular season". 

The first part of that was to solidify their D.  They did that by adding Doughty to a very veteran D corps.

"Doughty was someone we knew we wanted and as soon as he became available we had to make that trade.  He's been a very nice surprise and has had instant chemistry with some of our players already".

The next part was trading for a #1 C.  Talks for Pierre-Luc Dubois were fast and furious.

"From the get go, the Blue Jackets had been adament that PLD wasn't available.  We had brought his name up a few times last season and GM Todd "Piznasty" Pizzati would quickly shut talks down.  We ended up just presenting him with an offer and talks went very quickly".

Are the Coyotes done?

"We still have some irons in the fire that we're stoking.  And we're eying some other players as well, everything from prospects to veterans.  We're not looking at this as a "We need to sell to compete this season".  This is more like a, we can try to make the playoffs and still prepare ourselves for the future".

Look out folks, it seems like this desert dog has some life in them after all.