After he received the most NHL playing time of his career this season, minor league veteran Laurent Dauphin is headed back to the desert. Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports reports that Dauphin is in agreement with the Arizona Coyotes on a one-year, two-way contract worth $750K at the NHL level. It also includes a $400K minor league guarantee.
Dauphin’s signing returns him to Arizona for the third time. Dauphin was drafted 39th overall by the Coyotes at the 2013 draft and was re-acquired by them in 2018, a year after being shipped to Chicago in the Niklas Hjalmarsson deal. Dauphin has spent the last three seasons playing closer to home in the Montreal Canadiens organization, mostly with the Laval Rocket. In Laval, Dauphin was an important top-six center, scoring relatively close to a point-per-game rate and being among their most heavily utilized forwards.
This season, as the Canadiens endured a nightmarish season, Dauphin earned a call-up and an increased role after the Canadiens shipped away numerous veteran players at the trade deadline. Under Martin St. Louis, Dauphin played a larger NHL role than he’d ever played before and was utilized as a middle-six centerman. Obviously, that was more due to necessity than Dauphin’s true talent level, but it would be misleading to say anything other than Dauphin performed better than expected at the NHL level. He had 12 points in 38 games and provided an up-tempo, high-energy game.
He’ll bring that to either the Coyotes or the Tucson Roadrunners, and be someone coaches can rely on. He may not get the same NHL opportunity he got with Montreal, but at the very least he’ll be an impactful AHL player for a Roadrunners club that could be stocked with prospects next season.