Arizona Coyotes - Welcome to Mullett Arena!

[WarningTrakPower]

I am going to be taking over the Arizona Coyotes (as Bill Armstrong).
Currently we are exactly halfway through the 2022/2023 season.

Here is a brief summary of the moves we have made so far:

- Sent Dylan Guenther back to WHL after 9 games
- Traded Nick Bjugstad to Chicago for a 7th rounder
- Traded Troy Stecher to Washington for a 7th rounder
- Traded Christian Fischer to Boston for Nick Foligno (plus 50% retained) & a 3rd rounder
- Traded Jusso Välimäki to Montreal for a 4th rounder
- Traded Jack McBain to San Jose for Nico Sturm (plus 50% retained)
- Traded Ben McCartney & a 4th rounder for Matt Martin (plus 50% retained)
- Traded Josh Brown & a 4th rounder to Boston for Connor Clifton
- Traded Liam O'Brien to Boston for Tomáš Nosek

After 41 games, we are by far in last place with only 8 wins and 20 measly points.

Heading in to the 2nd half and approaching the trade deadline, we have Shayne Gostisbehere on an expiring contract. We also have Nick Ritchie, but since we likely won't get much for him in return, we will likely just hold on to him.

I will make another post once we reach the draft!

[reverist]

Let's go Bedard sweepstakes!

[WarningTrakPower]

At the trade deadline we didn't have as many suitors for Shayne Gostisbehere as we originally expected, so we ended up trading him (with a 4th round pick) for Mikey Anderson from the Kings.
LA decided to resign him for 2yr and $4.8m per season. We resigned Anderson for 3yr and $2.5m per season.

Mathias Maccelli resigned for 3yr and $2.5m per season. He had a fine season with 12 goals and 15 assists in 80 games.
Jan Jeník resigned for 2yr and $2.75m per season. He potted 14 goals and had 22 assists in 77 games last season.

This brings us to the draft and thankfully with the best odds for the 1st overall pick, we did in fact win the draft lottery!
"With the 1st overall pick, we are proud to select, from the Regina Pats, Connor Bedard."

Let's take a look at the final 2022/2023 regular season standings.
Below is the Western Conference standings.



Surpised to see Vancouver make it in and Dalas missing out. Winnipeg also seems to struggle in year one of every sim I have done so far in FHM9.

Below is the Eastern Confernce standings.



Hard to believe that Tampa Bay missed out and good on Detroit for landing a top 3 spot in the Atlantic. NJ also failed to match the somewhat surprised season IRL.

After a very entertaining playoffs, we had a rematch of the 2006 Stanley Cup in the finals.
For the first time since 1993, the Stanley Cup belongs to a Canadian city!



As we head in to the offseason, we will need to add some salary to get to the cap floor. We are currently sitting at about $52.5m, so we have $8.5m to spend just to get to the floor.
We will most likely try to add salary via trade to hopefully acquire more prospect(s)/pick(s).

The next update will be when we get to Opening Night of 2023/2024!

[Tangerino]

As an Oilers fan its nice to see we won and took revenge on the Canes Good luck with the career! Let's go Bedard!!

[WarningTrakPower]

Originally Posted by Tangerino

As an Oilers fan its nice to see we won and took revenge on the Canes Good luck with the career! Let's go Bedard!!

Did you happen to notice how they were down 3-1 in the series vs Vancouver and came back? Hyman had 17 goals in the playoffs also.

[WarningTrakPower]

We signed Connor Bedard and Logan Cooley to their 3yr entry level contracts.
We signed Andrei Kuzmenko to a 2yr contract worth $1.25m per season.
We traded Vladislav Kolyachonok to Vegas for Alec Martinez and a 3rd round pick.
We traded Ben Hutton and a 3rd round pick to LA for Matt Roy.
We traded Travis Boyd to Chicago for Tyler Johnson and a 3rd round pick.
We claimed Jonas Siegenthaler off waivers ($1.2m for '23/'24).

On opening night, we are about $400,000 over the cap floor.
Below is our opening night lineup vs Chicago!



Note - We are GM only in this sim. Our head coach is (still) André Tourigny.

[CanuckJohnny]

Nice moves. Got a good deal for Mikey Anderson considering he just signed irl for like $4M. Great deal for Kuzmenko too (dang Vancouver let him walk boo) considering he extended 2 years at $5.5M for us irl.

Good luck to you, are you hoping for a stronger season or another high draft pick?

I would prefer to GM only because irl the GM/HC thing never happens any more in the big leagues, but I find GM only to be frustrating because the AI coach does dumb things sometimes and I wish I could occasionally override it (plus I don't feel like they have that much difference/personality and for some reason you can't edit most of their style preferences to give them more variation)

[WarningTrakPower]

Originally Posted by CanuckJohnny

Good luck to you, are you hoping for a stronger season or another high draft pick?

The current plan is try to be competitive and see what happens. I am thinking somewhat similar to how the Sabres surprised people this year a little bit IRL. Perhaps that is more realistic for next season, but time will tell.

There will be some difficult decisions ahead (Chychrun and Vejmelka) while staying above the cap floor.

I was surprised we couldn't really find anyone willing to send us an expiring contract with a decent draft pick (like Marleau going from Toronto to Carolina).

We haven't simmed very far, but very happy with the results so far.

[WarningTrakPower]

Originally Posted by CanuckJohnny

Great deal for Kuzmenko too (dang Vancouver let him walk boo) considering he extended 2 years at $5.5M for us irl.

It's not all bad news in Van, they did resign Bo Horvat to an extremely team friendly extension.

[CanuckJohnny]

Yeah, it seems like the game doesn't do the best job of replicating the modern NHL's valuation of cap space, bad contracts don't seem to have that much negative value, and teams don't seem to make much effort to get rid of them. I think in general the trade system needs some work, I see so many weird trade decisions by the AI, like win now teams trading their top scorer for a prospect midway through the season.

Nice to see Horvat took a cheap deal lol. I bet in game he didn't go off and produce like a 50 goal center either though. Still, it would be nice if premier players like him signed more realistic contracts. No star in his prime like that is signing a three year deal nowadays, especially not for under market value AAV like that. Maybe in the future, especially with the work on tracking more analytics metrics, the game can produce something similar to the GSVA metric that Dom at the Athletic has, and base contracts somewhat off that.

Looking forward to see how you do going forward!

[WarningTrakPower]

After 24 games, we are off to a blazing hot start current sitting at 15-6-3(!) for 33 points which puts us in 1st in the Central Division.

In the first game of the season, Dylan Guenther scored a hat trick (did not score last year in his 9 game debut).
Also, Logan Cooley picked up his first points by recording 3 assists in his NHL debut.



In our third game of the season, Connor Bedard scored his first NHL goal (unassisted) vs Minnesota (on Erik Gustavsson).



We have been keeping an eye on the trade block to see how can add to this team without having to give us too much.
Also, we are only $400,000 over the cap floor at the moment, but our monthly finances are in the toilet (perhaps due to the arena seating capacity?).



Even though we are off to a great start, the team morale is quite low. I'd like to find a way to spend some of these points to help fix that, but constantly sitting in the red each month.

One player we noticed was on the trade block is Casey Mittelstadt.
He is making $2.6m on an expiring contract and had 17 goals & 19 assists last year. Just turned 25 in November.
Jan Jeník is skating on our 4th line and we signed him for 2yr and $5.5m total last offseason.

The LA Kings are sitting at 20-3-3 with 43 points after 26 games. Jonathan Quick is rocking a .931 SV% after 23 games also.

Next team update will be somewhere around the 40 game mark of the season or All Star break!

[WarningTrakPower]

We continue to have a very strong season in the Desert, after 51 games we are sitting at 29-13-9(!) for 67 points and we are still sitting in 1st place in the Central Division!

We really haven't had to make any roster changes so far and we have been extremely lucky with injuries (knock on wood).

Let's recap how some of the players have performed in the first 50+ games or so:





Top Line
Keller - Sturm - Schmaltz
Very impressive stat lines for this group. Did not expect for Nico Sturm to produce with numbers like this (-17 however, so he is doing damage on the PP).

Second Line
Kuzmenko - Cooley - Guenther
Most of their production came at even strength, which is a good sign of things to come from some of these young guys.

Third Line
Crouse - Johnson - Bedard
We would like to upgrade the centre spot on this line. Tyler Johnson only has 31 shots in 47 games (also has a FO% below 50).

Fourth Line
Jenik - Hayton - Macchelli
Not much to say about these guys.

*We have Liam Kirk (LW) who is more than ready in the AHL (over a point a game in his last ~120 games). Could look to move Jenik to make room for a callup (need to stay at cap floor though).

First Pair
Chychrun - Moser
Janis Moser had like 7 goals in the first 30 games (after 6 games he had 4), but he has cooled off offensively.

Second Pair
Martinez - Roy
Couple "stay at home" dmen doing their thing

"Third" Pair
Anderson - Mayo
The bottom 4 D are all hovering around that 20min per game mark.

*We have Viktor Soderstrom in the AHL and ideally we would make a trade to give him a look on the bottom pair (he is right handed shooter).

Goalies
Ivan Prosvetov has stolen the starters job after getting off to a blazing hot start.
Preferably we would play the backup more (my preference), but as GM only we are just letting the coach decide.

Should we tinker the start settings perhaps? Let me know what you think.

Karel Vejmelka is having a good year, but it is such a small sample size (only 11 games after 51 team games).

We have finally gotten out of the red financially, so we've been able to add a few points for morale and scouting.

Also, Colorado made this trade with Philly. We definitely would have traded a 3rd round pick for Bowen Byram.
The Avs are likely up against the cap and needed to make a move.



The Sabres have removed Casey Mittelstadt from the trade block it seems. We will be monitoring the trade block closely the next month or so until the trade deadline.

After this start to our season, we don't have a choice but to be buyers heading to the deadline. We will see if we can get creative and not mortgage the future for this playoff push.

Thanks as always for reading and hopefully we will have another update soon!

[CanuckJohnny]

Wow, pleasant surprise to have Nico Sturm step up as a 1C for you. Going well. Nice recap.

Yuck, weird trade by the Avs though.

[WarningTrakPower]

Let's start with a recap of the trades we made leading up to the trade deadline:

-Traded Barrett Hayton to NJ for Michael McLeod
We upgrade our bottom 6 centre position by adding McLeod who was over 57% in the dot on the season. He is also signed for 2 more years at about $4m per (a little more than we would like but we have room).

-Traded a 3rd round pick to Minny for Alex Goligoski
Although he is left handed, we wanted to bring him back to Arizona to play on the right side.

-Traded Dysin Mayo and a 5th rounder to Pitt for Jeff Carter
Mayo was the odd man out after adding Goligoski and we add another veteran forward who is good at faceoffs in Carter (expiring contract).

*Janis Moser tore his hamstring and was expected to miss 2 months leaving a lot of icetime to replace on the right side of our D pairs

-Traded Tyler Johnson with a 3rd rounder to Seattle for Justin Schultz
We didn't have room for Johnson and bring in Schultz to eat up some of the minutes left behind from the Moser injury

-Traded Jan Jeník to Philly for James van Riemsdyk
James was having a nice season with 30 points in 48 games. He slides in on our 3rd line and pushes Crouse to the 4th line

*Justin Schultz separated his shoulder late March and is going to miss about a month.

*Claimed Jesper Boqvist off waivers from the Kraken (38 points in 59 games).

After putting together a terrific season, we finished with a record of 45-28-9 for 99 points which put us alone in 6th place in the Western Conference overall.

The defending champion Oilers missed the playoffs by one point Also, out East the Bruins missed as well finishing with only 87 points.
Top team in the league by points was Carolina with 112 and Colorado finished with 111 points.

Let's check out our end of season player stats starting with our forwards:



What a strange contract between our first and second lines. The top line was ~ -15 each and the second line was ~+29!

Overall, very happy with the production from the top 7 forwards including a nice 21 goal rookie season for Connor Bedard.



Losing Janis Moser definitely hurt us down the stretch as he was averaging over 23min a night for us.
Alex Martinez turned back to clock potting double digit goals for the first time since 2015/16.
Mikey Anderson didn't find the back of the net once and suited up for all 82 games.



Ivan Prosvetov played an absurd 66 games when we expected him to just be a competent backup at the start of the season.

We let Connor Ingram walk in free agency and he played 71 games for the Blackhawks this year!
Something strange going on with goalie starts as there was 10 guys who played in at least 70 games ()

Here is the Stanley Cup playoff bracket



In the first round we faceoff against a very strong Winnipeg team.
They are still led by Kyle Connor, Nick Ehlers, Mark Scheifele (day to day injury) & Pierre-Luc Dubois up front, but Blake Wheeler is out for the season.
They are thin on defense where the only player to eclipse the 30 point mark was Josh Morrissey and he is also done for the season with broken ankle.
Their rock is obviously Connor Helleybuyck who had a very nice bounce back season (3.41 GAA in 2022/23).

Next recap will be after the first round!

[Greenert11]

Old Jets vs New Jets should be interesting!

[WarningTrakPower]

Below are a few of the interesting trades that took place recently:

-Buffalo traded Peyton Krebs to Edmonton for a 2nd round pick
Sabres has Krebs buried in the AHL for some reason

-Calgary traded Oliver Kylington to Chicago for a 2nd round pick
Strange move from the Flames as he had 16 goals and 56 points on D while logging 20min a night last year (only making $2.5m)
He is a pending UFA and had a really nice year with the Hawks. Someone we might target this offseason

-Carolina traded a 2nd round pick to Ottawa for Anton Forsberg
They still have Raanta and Kochetkov in the AHL, odd decision

-Colorado traded Bowen Byram to Philly for a 3rd round pick
We would have made this trade in a heartbeat. Avs must be up against the cap and had to move Byran to activate someone from the injured list.

-Dallas traded a 2nd round pick to New York for Casey Cizikas
I like this pickup, but don't really like the asking price

-Montreal traded a 3rd round pick to Toronto for Michael Bunting
-Montreal traded a 6th round pick to Toronto for Justin Holl
These trades happened after the preseason and didn't really move the needle for the Habs.

-Nashville traded (the rights to) Tanner Jeannot to Toronto for a 2nd round pick
Really liked this pickup for the Leafs

-New York Rangers traded Vitali Kravtsov to Vegas for a 2nd round pick
Odd move for Vegas for a guy to play on their 4th line

-Pittsburgh trade Bryan Rust to Toronto for Ty Voit (5th round pick in 2021)
Rust has 4 more years with a cap hit around $5m and had 44pts in 50 games with Pitt

-Tampa traded a 2nd round pick to Toronto for Denis Malgin
Another overpay for a bottom 6 / 4th line guy

-Toronto traded Calle Jarnkrok to Vancouver for a 3rd round pick
Kyle Dubas did some roster cleanup early on in the season

-Winnipeg traded Dylan Samberg to Florida for Alex Killorn
Strange part here was the Jets resigned Killorn for $4m after he signed for $750k before the season

[WarningTrakPower]

Game 1


Great team effort for the first game of the playoffs. Logan Cooley opened the scoring with a shorthanded goal and Ivan Prosvetov stopped 27 of 28.
Alex Goligoski led the team in icetime with 22:35

Game 2


Solid first two periods and it fell apart in the third. Two goals in less than 30 seconds early in the third and it was downhill from there.
Victor Soderstrom logged almost 24min after Alec Martinez left the game injured.

Game 3


First playoff game at home and we put the hammer down in the third this time.

Clayton Keller had a natural hat trick in the third period (four goals on the night)!


Game 4


What a barn burner in this one. Connor Bedard scored his first playoff goal and was surprisingly the only guy to pot one on the night.
Over 27min of ice time for Jakob Chychrun in this one

Game 5


After two scoreless periods, the flood gates opened up in the third.
Two goals in less than a minute by Michael McLeod and Dylan Guenther (his first of the playoffs) put us ahead and we didn't look back.

We are off to the Second Round where we will face off with the Colorado Avalanche (54-25-3)!

[WarningTrakPower]

Game 1



Massive victory on the road to start the series. Down 3-2 heading into the 3rd period and Lawson Crouse scored with 15 seconds left to give us the win in regulation!
Trent Miner has taken over in nets for the Avs after Alexandar Georgiyev played in 72 games during the regular season.

Game 2



Tough loss in this one and we were never really in it. We went up 1-0 early, but the Avs answered back quickly with 2 goals in the 1st by Nathan MacKinnon.

Game 3



After going up 3-0 after 20 min, the Avs came out and dominated the final 40 minutes. In the 2nd period they got goals from their bottom 6 in Jacob MacDonald, Jean-Lu Foudy and Evan Rodrigues.
Andrei Kuzmenko led our team in even strength ice time at just over 19min.

Game 4



Excellent bounce back effort in this one. We ended up giving up the tying goal in the 3rd period to Valeri Nichushkin, but Matias Maccelli ripped the game winner in OT in front of the home crowd at the Mullett Arena.

Game 5



Parker Kelly scored early in the 3rd to go ahead and we couldn't find the equalizer.
We outshot Colorado 41-30, but it wasn't enough as Trent Miner did his best Patrick Roy impression.

Game 6



Back home in a do or die scenario and the boys came out buzzin'.
Big 2 goal game for Lawson Crouse (just over 14min of ice time).

Game 7



The Avs went up 1-0, but we answered back right away with a goal by Dylan Guenther (only his 2nd of the playoffs).
Alex Beaucage put the Avs up 2-1 in the middle of the 2nd and it stayed that way after 40 minutes.
Michael McLeod (played less than 6min) scored with just over 5min remaining in the 3rd to tie it at 2 and we were off to overtime in Game 7!

Early in the extra frame Nico Sturm got a high sticking penalty and Alex Beaucage popped the winner on the powerplay.
Logan Cooley stepped up and played 19:29 at even strength in this one to lead our team (was also 7 for 8 on faceoffs).

We are really proud of how this time battled all season long and can't wait to see the improvements we can make in 2024/25!

Best of luck to Colorado as they face Nashville (#1 wildcard seed) in the Western Conference finals.

Out East, Toronto are facing off against the Tampa (#2 wildcard seed) in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Next update will likely be at the draft / start of free agency!

[WarningTrakPower]

The Colorado Avalanche are the 2024 Stanley Cup Champions!



Nice run from Nashville to get to the Western Conference finals.



Have to give Toronto some credit for coming back to force a Game 7, but congrats to Colorado on another dominant season.

Offseason Recap

Dylan Guenther is the 2024 Calder Trophy winner!



Also, he was joined by Connor Bedard and Ivan Prosvetov on the All-Rookie Team!



Winnipeg decided to trade for Sergei Bobrovsky and his $10m cap hit (1000% unrealistic).



We traded a 3rd round pick for Alex Turcotte from the LA Kings (they had him on the trading block).

Later, we flipped him to Nashville for Ryan McDonagh (no money retained).
Ryan is under contract for until after the 2025/26 season with a cap hit of $6.75m.

Contract Extensions (signed after playoffs)

Janis Moser - 5yr @ $3m per
Matt Roy - 3yr @ $5m per (slight overpay here)
Ivan Prosvetov - 2yr @ $2m per
Victor Soderstrom - 3yr @ $1.05m per
Liam Kirk - 2yr @ $1.25m per

This brings us to July 1st, and there is a MAJOR free agent available.

Anyone want to wager a guess as to who we might be targeting in free agency this offseason?

We will be simming to the start of the 2024/25 season and will post an update soon!

[Greenert11]

#34 come on home, will you be moving to a new arena anytime soon assuming in this timeline the New Tempe Arena vote goes through?