in all seriousness, I wonder if this has to do with making Arizona attractive to Logan Cooley?
Yeah. I do kind of wonder about this. Cooley has the potential to flex himself out and walk as a UFA if he really doesn't like where the Yotes organization is headed at that point. I can see what they've done recently as bad enough that it might genuinely inspire a top prospect to burn a little bit of their pro career just to avoid walking into that deeply unserious, uncompetitive environment, playing in a tiny college rink smaller than what he's even used to as an actual NCAA player.
I think there could even be a Michkov element to this. As it stands right now, i wouldn't have a lot of confidence in the Coyotes ability to get him to come over, even
after that KHL contract commitment runs out. If they're serious about taking him in the draft, that gives them a few years to start turning things around and somehow make themselves an appealing destination for a guy who is already sort of shrouded in mystery about his level of desire to come over to North America. That isn't a switch you can just flip one day. At some point, you have to start with a concerted effort to improve the team and get better incrementally, or at least start to show some potential to be a good young team a few years from now when he'll be sizing up his NHL opportunities.
But i do still feel like this is more of a shift from, "dumping ground for imaginary contracts" toward "trying to acquire some decent budget conscious players". Not some signal that they're going to go on a Free Agent bender or anything.
I do also think that seeing what Seattle has done, has to spur them on a bit. Where maybe they can pick up a few middling UFAs this year, a few next year, time it up with their various top prospects starting to arrive and hit their stride...and maybe you can replicate what they've done to start turning things around pretty quickly. They certainly have the cap space to do something like that...if the financials behind the scenes can support that at some point.
But i also can't help but wonder if that doesn't make a guy like Tyler Myers more attractive to them. He'd be an upgrade on their defence and once that bonus is paid out, he's not really a "bad contract". He's just a very budget friendly $1M #4/5RHD. And no matter what Arizona do here, they're not likely to have any real concerns about hitting the salary cap limit so that still shouldn't be a barrier for them.