- The Coyotes announced (Twitter link) that they’ve recalled defenseman Cameron Crotty from AHL Tucson on an emergency basis. The 24-year-old is in his fourth professional season and this will be his first recall and first game as he took the place of Josh Brown who was out due to an illness. Crotty has three goals and nine assists in 45 games with the Roadrunners this season.
Coyotes Rumors
Nick Bjugstad Recovers From Injury, Nathan Smith Returned From Loan
- Moving to the Central Division, Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports that forward Nick Bjugstad will make his return to the lineup tonight for the Arizona Coyotes. This confirms that Bjugstad has shaken off his day-to-day injury designation suffered in the team’s most recent game against the New Jersey Devils. A key offensive contributor for the organization over the last couple of weeks, Bjugstad has scored seven goals and 10 points in his last 13 games for the Coyotes.
- Staying in Arizona, the team has announced they have returned forward Nathan Smith to their AHL affiliate, the Tucson Roadrunners. Smith was originally recalled via an emergency loan for insurance if Bjugstad could not play tonight. He will return to a Roadrunners team where he has scored nine goals and 27 points in 48 games this season.
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Coyotes Likely To Remain At Mullett Arena For 2024-25
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly confirmed the Coyotes are likely to remain at Tempe’s Mullett Arena for the 2024-25 season (via Chris Johnston of The Athletic and TSN). Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo’s current attempt to keep the team in the Phoenix area involves a bid for a public land auction involving a plot in the north part of the city, although the auction won’t occur until June. Next season is the final one in the initial three-year lease the Coyotes signed with Arizona State University to play at the new facility, which also has two one-year extension options.
Daly said the league “probably” wouldn’t have enough time to pivot toward relocation if the bid fails and would punt an effort to move the team to a new market – Salt Lake City is the most likely – to 2025-26. Per Johnston, both Daly and Commissioner Gary Bettman did not issue a set deadline on a relocation decision for the franchise, but the former said “it’s getting late” in the process.
The Coyotes’ initial attempt to remain in the market, a multi-use development in Tempe near the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, failed when their proposal was struck down in a public referendum last May. They have since yet to issue a comprehensive plan for a new arena in the region.
Bettman affirmed the league’s faith in Arizona as an NHL market, once again signaling the league will return if relocation becomes a necessity:
We would’ve preferred to be in a new arena by now, but there are certain things that couldn’t be controlled. We would’ve preferred that the referendum in Tempe went the other way, but it didn’t, and so we deal with what we can deal with. Having said that, we believe Arizona, particularly the greater Phoenix area, is a good NHL market. It’s a place we want to be.
In the unlikely event that the Coyotes lose the auction and have no serviceable Plan B lined up, it’s hard to imagine the league issuing them any more patience. If so, the franchise will likely not take advantage of their extension options on the Mullett lease and move to either Salt Lake City or another market with demonstrated interest, such as Atlanta or Houston, for the 2025-26 season.
Bjugstad Listed As Day-To-Day
- Coyotes center Nick Bjugstad is listed as day-to-day and his availability for Wednesday’s game against Dallas is uncertain, notes team reporter Patrick Brown (Twitter link). The 31-year-old has done well in his second stint in Arizona this season, collecting 17 goals along with 20 assists in 67 games so far. The uncertainty over his availability is what resulted in Nathan Smith’s recall earlier today.
Coyotes Recall Nathan Smith
The Coyotes recalled forward Nathan Smith from the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners on Monday, according to a team announcement. It’s his first recall of the season. The move comes under emergency conditions, meaning the Coyotes may be without a second regular forward in addition to Barrett Hayton (lower-body, day-to-day) for Wednesday’s game against the Stars.
Arizona picked up the signing rights to Smith, 25, in a trade with the Jets in 2022 that saw the Coyotes take on the remainder of center Bryan Little’s contract, who last played in the 2019-20 season but will not play again due to a ruptured eardrum. The former Minnesota State University standout and 2022 Olympian with the United States signed a two-year entry-level deal shortly thereafter and re-upped on a one-year, two-way deal ($775K/$115K/$165K) upon expiry last summer.
Smith is settling into professional life after a disappointing campaign with Tucson last year. He’s already matched 2022-23’s point total in 16 fewer games and has improved defensively, recording nine goals and 27 points with an even rating in 48 games. He hasn’t played in the NHL since a four-game call-up in March last year.
In 14 career NHL appearances over the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns, Smith recorded two goals, two assists, and a -2 rating while averaging 12:14 per game. The Tampa native is a natural center but struggled in the faceoff dot during his NHL stints, winning 40.5% of his draws.
Smith is still waiver-exempt, although that will lapse next season if the Coyotes opt to bring him back. If they choose to issue him a qualifying offer, he’ll be an RFA with arbitration rights this summer.
Nick Bjugstad Leaves Game With Injury
- Earlier this evening, when the Arizona Coyotes matched up against the New Jersey Devils, Nick Bjugstad left the game after having only accrued 7:24 of ice time and did not return (X Link). It will be a tough blow to a Coyotes lineup if Bjugstad is unable to play for the foreseeable future, as he has recently been a focal point of their lineup. In the last 12 games, Bjugstad has scored seven goals and 10 points in total, averaging just over 17 minutes of ice time per night.
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Barrett Hayton Out With Lower-Body Injury
- The Arizona Coyotes will be without center Barrett Hayton tonight, as Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports he is considered day-to-day with a lower-body injury. It has been a slow recovery for Hayton after coming back from an upper-body injury suffered in December, scoring one goal and six points in 17 games since the start of February.
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Arizona Coyotes Send Down Victor Soderstrom
- Recalling him from their AHL affiliate on March 8th, defenseman Victor Soderstrom’s time with the Arizona Coyotes has come to an end for the time being. The team announced they have sent Soderstrom down to the Tucson Roadrunners after playing two games for the Coyotes on this recent stretch. On the year, Soderstrom has mostly played for the Roadrunners, scoring eight goals and 25 points over 50 games.
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Coyotes Couldn't Retain Salary; Teams Had Interest In Bjugstad, Kerfoot, And Carcone
The Coyotes had a fairly underwhelming trade deadline after getting minimal returns for Mathew Dumba and Jason Zucker but as PHNX Sports’ Craig Morgan notes, GM Bill Armstrong did not have the green light to retain salary which certainly restricted their options on the trade front to teams who had the cap space to take on the full contract of which there were few.
Meanwhile, Armstrong indicated that there was strong interest in centers Nick Bjugstad and Alexander Kerfoot along with winger Michael Carcone. All three players have one year left on their respective contracts and are at price tags that range from below market value to affordable so it’s no surprise teams were calling the Coyotes about those players. Clearly, there wasn’t an offer to their liking so all three remain in Arizona, at least for now.
Lightning Acquire Matt Dumba
The Lightning are nearing a trade to acquire defenseman Matt Dumba from the Coyotes, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. There is no salary retention in the trade, per Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic, and the Lightning are receiving a 2025 seventh-round pick along with Dumba. Tampa Bay is sending a 2027 fifth-round pick to Arizona as compensation. The Arizona Coyotes have confirmed this trade package.
Dumba sat out of Arizona’s Thursday night game for trade-related reasons, alongside fellow veteran and long-time teammate Jason Zucker. Both players were dealt ahead of the Deadline, with Arizona reeling in a sixth and seventh round pick for the pair. Dumba was in his first season with the Coyotes, signing a one-year, $3.9MM contract with the team this summer. It was the first move of his 10-year career, with Dumba spending the last nine seasons in a prominent role with the Minnesota Wild. He quickly proved to be an effective offensive-defenseman, with 11 goals and 34 points in the 2016-17 season cementing his spot in Minnesota’s lineup. The Wild sent Alex Tuch to the Vegas Golden Knights in order to guarantee they wouldn’t select Dumba in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft, and Dumba awarded them appropriately, recording a career-high 14 goals and 50 points in the subsequent 2017-18 season. He was continuing his high-scoring into the 2018-19 year, with 22 points in 33 games, but lost his season to an upper-body injury in December, kicking off a nagging injury bug that’s since followed Dumba’s career. He’s only played in 70 or more games once since the 2017-18 season – coming last year, when he scored 14 points in 79 games.
Dumba’s string of injuries also represented a severe dip in scoring, with the defenseman failing to score more than seven goals in any of the last six seasons. He should have ample opportunity to fix that in Tampa, with the Lightning’s defense in shambles after losing Mikhail Sergachev to injury. Tampa has been forced to ice Darren Raddysh and Nicklaus Perbix in top-pairing roles and while each player has managed modest scoring – with 21 and 20 points respectively – they ceratinly don’t bring the pedigree that Dumba’s amassed across his 656 career games. The newest Lightning defenseman could quickly earn a top-pairing role next to Victor Hedman, unless Tampa opts to play him down the lineup, with the hopes of making their blue-line depth more cohesive.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.