- Veteran Arizona Coyotes forward Nick Bjugstad has had a bit of a career resurgence in the desert, as his 21 points in 49 games this season are the most he’s scored in several years. His strong performance comes at a cheap price, as he’s playing on just a $900k cap hit for the rest of the season. The combination of Bjugstad’s improved play, cheap price tag, and veteran experience has apparently attracted more competitive clubs seeking to reinforce their forward group. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on tonight’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, the Edmonton Oilers are one of the teams with interest in Bjugstad. The Oilers have recently been running seven defensemen in their lineup, so the addition of Bjugstad could slot him in nicely as their fourth-line center providing coach Jay Woodcroft with a more traditional lineup.
Coyotes Rumors
Arizona Coyotes Reassign Milos Kelemen
Jan 26: After making his NHL debut, Kelemen is on his way back to the minor leagues. He played just over ten minutes, recorded three hits and generated one shot on goal.
Jan 24: Last spring, the Arizona Coyotes reached an agreement with a young, undrafted forward who had found success all over Europe. Milos Kelemen signed a two-year, entry-level contract and came over to North America for his first taste of AHL action.
Now, Kelemen has been recalled to the NHL, after 39 relatively strong games with the Tucson Roadrunners.
Part of the historic Slovakian Olympic team that earned their first hockey medal last year, the 23-year-old Kelemen has 20 points in 39 games for the Roadrunners this season. The Coyotes opened some room by sending Michael Carcone back to the minors yesterday, though Matias Maccelli and Lawson Crouse are also expected to return soon from injury.
It remains to be seen whether Kelemen will actually get into a game, but he represents another chance that the Coyotes front office is willing to take as they search everywhere for young assets. Eventually, the odds are good that they will find a hidden gem to add to their stable of high draft picks.
Shayne Gostisbehere Out 4-6 Weeks With Upper-Body Injury
In just about the worst timing possible, Shayne Gostisbehere is expected to miss four to six weeks with an upper-body injury, according to Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports. The Arizona Coyotes’ defenseman suffered the injury on Tuesday against the Anaheim Ducks, when he played just 19:20, only the tenth time all season he was under the 20-minute mark.
Bad timing not because the Coyotes are playing for a playoff spot, but because he is a leading candidate to be moved at the trade deadline. The 29-year-old defenseman is in the last season of a six-year, $27MM deal and has racked up 29 points in 48 games so far. With the Coyotes willing to retain some salary, Gostisbehere could have been an interesting pickup for several contenders looking to add a bit of offensive punch to the back end.
An injury now means could have already played his final game with the Coyotes. If that’s the case, it has been an extremely productive period for the third-round pick, even though the team hasn’t experienced much success in the standings.
In the summer of 2021, the Philadelphia Flyers sent Gostisbehere to the desert along with a second and a seventh-round pick for nothing more than cap relief. They received future considerations in return, while Arizona assumed the entirety of Gostisbehere’s contract.
From the moment he arrived in Arizona, he’s been productive, scoring 13 goals and 51 points last season. Gostisbehere ranks 17th in scoring among defensemen across the entire league over the last two seasons, ahead of names like Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore, Seth Jones, and Dougie Hamilton.
An injury like this will only hurt his value heading into the deadline, reducing whatever return the Coyotes were able to get. Hopefully, for Arizona, he’ll be able to return and play at least one game before March 3rd, but if he can’t, a buyer will be taking a chance that Gostisbehere’s game isn’t affected down the stretch.
Juuso Valimaki Fined For Slashing
The NHL Department of Player Safety fined Arizona Coyotes defenseman Juuso Valimaki $4,189.19 on Wednesday, the maximum allowable under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), for slashing Anaheim Ducks forward Max Jones. The announcement came from the department’s Twitter account.
Valimaki’s infraction occurred in last night’s 5-2 home loss to the Ducks. Officials gave him a five-minute major for slashing and game misconduct on the play, which occurred 3:34 into the second period.
Jones initiated contact between the two players, and Valimaki was primarily penalized for the retaliatory nature of the slash, which was to Jones’ lower back and caused him to fall to the ice.
The fine means Valimaki, who’s appeared in 44 of 48 Coyotes games this season, won’t miss any further game action. The small financial blow is softened even further by the fact that the Coyotes signed him to a one-year contract extension before the game yesterday.
In his first season with Arizona, Valimaki has already set a career-high in points with 12. He’s well on his way to shattering his previous games played high of 49 with Calgary in 2020-21.
Arizona Coyotes Extend Juuso Valimaki
The Arizona Coyotes have signed Juuso Valimaki to a one-year contract extension, avoiding restricted free agency this summer. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports that the deal will be worth $1MM. Coyotes general manager Bill Armstrong released a statement:
We are very pleased to sign Juuso to a one-year extension. He is a big, strong, two-way defenseman who has been a great addition to our defensive corps. We look forward to having him on our roster next season.
Valimaki, 24, was claimed off waivers from the Calgary Flames in October and has found a home in Arizona. Playing a depth role, he has 12 points in 43 games and looks to have put his injury troubles behind him. This extension is a nice piece of work by Armstrong and the Coyotes front office, given that Valimaki would have been due a qualifying offer substantially higher in the offseason, or else hit the open market as an unrestricted free agent.
Signed to a two-year deal by Calgary in 2021, he currently carries a $1.55MM cap hit. The qualifying offer would have been $1.86MM, and Valimaki has arbitration rights. With a $1MM deal in place, he’ll not only come in below that but remain under team control and on schedule to become an RFA in the summer of 2024 once again.
The 16th overall pick of 2017, Valimaki suffered a torn ACL in 2019 that cost him an entire season of development. The young defenseman has struggled to live up to the early hype since, and now looks more like he’ll settle into a bottom-pairing or seventh-defenseman role in the NHL. While that is still relatively valuable, the $1MM contract points to the lack of real upside that is present in his game today.
Valimaki becomes the fifth defenseman in Arizona signed to a one-way deal for 2023-24, joining Jakob Chychrun, Patrik Nemeth, Josh Brown, and Dysin Mayo (currently in the AHL). The team is likely going fill its ranks with youngsters in the years to come, as they start to turn from rebuilding to more competitive status. It remains to be seen whether Valimaki can continue to hold down a regular role once that transition takes place, but his age certainly fits into the timeline.
Victor Soderstrom Changes Representation
While his entry-level contract doesn’t expire until the summer of 2024, Arizona Coyotes top defense prospect Victor Soderstrom has changed his agency to Quartexx Management, according to a tweet Monday night.
The 11th overall pick in 2019, Soderstrom has yet to break into the NHL full-time and hasn’t seen so much as a call-up this season. He’s had a somewhat successful offensive campaign with AHL Tucson, recording 19 points in 38 games, but even that’s lower than last season’s point pace in the minors.
While Soderstrom was never drafted as a point producer, his two-way game hasn’t quite excelled in North America as the Coyotes organization would have hoped. He is still just 21, however, and defensemen are more prone to later bumps in their development.
Quartexx also represents some young, fringe NHLers such as Detroit’s Joe Veleno and Edmonton’s Philip Broberg, who was taken three spots ahead of Soderstrom in the 2019 draft. Broberg, however, has managed to step closer to a full-time NHL role this season, appearing in 22 games with Edmonton.
Latest On Lawson Crouse
- The Arizona Coyotes have announced that forward Lawson Crouse will miss tonight’s game with an upper-body injury. The 25-year-old 2015 first-round pick is in the middle of what is shaping up to be the best season of his career. He’s already scored 16 goals in just 43 games of action, and the team has to be hoping that he can return to action as soon as possible.
Arizona Coyotes Recall Michael Carcone
The Arizona Coyotes, fresh off their first win in ten games on Tuesday, have recalled Michael Carcone from the AHL. The minor league veteran was sent down earlier this month when Dylan Guenther returned and now will join them ahead of tonight’s game against the Washington Capitals. Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports that a player is dealing with a minor injury, leading to the recall.
Carcone, 26, continues to dominate AHL competition, with 20 goals and 51 points in just 32 games. That’s good enough for the league lead, despite playing fewer games than most of his competition. Carcone has suited up six times for the Coyotes this year, scoring two goals in the process. The undrafted, undersized forward has always been an offensive threat, just can’t seem to keep hold of an NHL opportunity for long. In his career, he has eight points in 27 games.
The bigger news of the day for Arizona was the presence of Matias Maccelli at practice this morning. He is now listed as day-to-day and might play next week, according to Morgan. Maccelli hasn’t played since December, and will likely bump Carcone back to the minor leagues once he’s healthy enough to return. The 22-year-old has just three goals on the year but has recorded 22 points in 30 games.
Detailing The Ballot Items For The Tempe Arena Vote
- The future of the Coyotes’ arena deal will be better known in May with a special election being held on the 16th. Sam Kmack of the Arizona Republic breaks down each of the three ballot items that will require a majority of yes votes to move forward. Tempe is the desired location for Arizona’s new arena and this is one of the hurdles that will need to be cleared for that project to continue. Even if it does pass, it will still be several years before it’s up and running so the team will continue to play out of their college arena for the foreseeable future.
Arizona Coyotes Reportedly Open To Trading Karel Vejmelka
The Arizona Coyotes haven’t been a good team this year, and they’re currently sitting close to the basement of the NHL standings. That poor performance has come despite the best efforts of netminder Karel Vejmelka, though, who has greatly impressed this season.
While Vejmelka’s box score numbers don’t jump off the page, (he has a .902 save percentage, 3.38 goals-against-average, and 11-15-4 record) looking a bit deeper into how the Czech goalie has performed reveals just how well he’s played in Arizona.
MoneyPuck’s goals saved above expected metric, which tracks how well a goalie has performed relative to how an average goalie would be expected to perform, ranks Vejmelka ninth in the entire NHL. He’s nipping at the heels of some of the NHL’s best netminders such as Igor Shesterkin and Andrei Vasilevskiy in that metric, which speaks volumes to the level he’s played at this year.
Vejmelka has frequently kept the Coyotes afloat in games despite being at a major talent disadvantage, and has stolen games that the team, on paper, had no right winning.
He’s still just 26 years old, and costs just $2.725MM against the cap for the next two seasons. While his track record is admittedly thin (he is untested in the playoffs and has just 83 NHL games on his resume) his play this year has left quite the impression.
Given all that information, recent reporting from Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek might come as a surprise. On last night’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, Marek reported that the Coyotes “would part with” Vejmelka “if the deal is right.”
Since Vejmelka has been so valuable for the Coyotes this year, the fact that the team would consider dealing him seems, on paper, to be a highly questionable decision.
But the unique state of the Coyotes adds some justification to the team’s thinking. Arizona is pursuing a long-term rebuilding plan, and the organization’s main goal has been building a stockpile of young players and prospects in order to fuel sustainable contention in the long-term.
The Coyotes may believe that Vejmelka may hold more value to their long-term plan for contention as a means of deepening that stockpile of picks and prospects, rather than as the goalie in their crease. If the team can net a player they believe can be a future top-six forward or top-four defenseman in exchange for Vejmelka, it’s easy to understand that rationale.
But even if one understands why the team might choose to cash in on Vejmelka, the prospect of trading such a talented starting netminder remains a difficult sell.
The Coyotes’ season has been all about player development, with the organization selling its fanbase on the idea that even though wins will be hard to come by, fans will be able to enjoy watching the development of players who will become foundational pillars of the next contending Coyotes team.
So if the Coyotes were to trade a player who is still relatively young and is among the best talents they have, that would come as quite the blow and would fly against the message of their season. The Coyotes seemingly found a potential core piece out of nowhere, signing Vejmelka as a relatively unheralded goalie out of the Czech league only for him to turn into an NHL starter. If they traded that goalie before he even reached 100 NHL games played, it would beg the question of what the Coyotes are even trying to accomplish as a franchise.
But still, the rationale of selling high on a player who still has a relatively thin NHL resume is certainly reasonable. So it’s undoubtedly a difficult situation and one where it’s easy to hear the arguments for each side. In the end, though, this report from Marek indicates that despite the development of players such as Clayton Keller into legitimate NHL stars, the Coyotes are still very much in the dog days of their rebuilding plan.