The Coyotes of yesteryear would never try something like this, but I think Tocchet and Chayka understand the direction the NHL seems to be heading so I'm still holding on to a long shot chance.
They do, but the question is how much will they over-correct if stuff goes wrong?
This is something I've been preaching various times the last 6 months or so. If you take a close look at what Tocchet was doing in the early season last year, it was working offensively.
They had a ton of reasons (mostly in the form of the win column being 0) to make changes. But also the defensive structure of the team was flat out garbage. I do not think this was purely a function of the system, it was exaggerated by both the early season where the defense is always a little behind, Domingue, and a roster full of young forwards.
But Tocchet did his due diligence and made changes to the system; in addition to Chayka trying to help a G (Wedgewood), and waiting for the defense to shape up (which they did, eventually).
What does this have to do with my point on over-correcting and Strome playing on the 4th line?
If you go back to the opener last season the lines were:
Domi - Stepan - Keller
Rieder - Dvorak - Duclair
Perlini - Strome - Crouse
Martinook - Richardson - Fischer
This is by any read of the players we had at the time a pretty forward thinking NHL line set with a mix of speed, offensive firepower, and strategically placed size or defense. The 4th line is kinda limited offensively but again, look at the roster we had to deal with.
But where did they over-correct? Strome was not given much of a chance. I'm sure a lot of people think his time in the AHL helped him, but I'm not really buying it much. He had already dominated, he didn't need to learn how to do that. His skating was good enough, people still complaining about it as of October of last year were on old talking points. He was just cold. It happens. As evidence I offer that when he was called up for his final chance last season where he succeeded, he was actually pretty cold at the AHL level before that with 3 points in 9 games. After a few games up in the NHL he heats up. I think this is mostly coincidence and bad luck; not demonstrative of something clicking with Strome over playing 3 months in the minors.
The second big place they over-corrected was our friends the stickybois. At first it worked sort of. They racked up some wins (this is pre-February's run) but weren't exactly setting the world on fire either. But the team had stabilized and could at least win a regulation game. So that's good. What's bad is the stickybois COULD NOT SCORE. Relative to their icetime their performance offensively was horrible. No line on a successful NHL team plays that many minutes and puts up so few points. The offense on the team was bone dry. Keller had not yet heated back up. Domi hadn't improved yet. Fischer and Perlini had started to enter massive slumps after pretty decent starts. They won on Raanta's Vezina caliber 3 months and prayed their bottom units/D could pot an unlikely goal to put them ahead of the other team.
So if I look at what the team tried to do at the start, it is clear they aren't trying to have a no scoring line in the top 12. It was an understandable reaction to stop the bleeding for a few months. Where they failed was they did not ramp up the offensive system until very late in the season after February's run. Guys like Fischer and Perlini essentially had lost second halves of the season despite the team winning. Once they stabilized things in January, they should have adjusted more quickly to try and get the offense going again.
The offense did get going again but that was mostly on the back of Keller and Stepan and not anything the team was doing sustainably. The end of the season while a huge relief was not really all that successful developmentally for 80% of the roster.
The Coyotes do not have a top tier type of talent they can lean on to carry them into being a playoff team. They need to
patiently integrate players like Strome into the lineup at the NHL level.
It's understandable why they didn't do it in November/December. But once it was clear that Raanta and the defensive tweaks(+time) had stabilized things they should have been much more aggressive at pushing the pace. All the underlying numbers offensively even when they were losing showed it was working. Don't go whole hog back into 7 seconds or less style hockey but something closer in conjunction with a capable goalie and a defense not passing to the other team anymore? They'd have probably won even more games then they did in the second half.
Strome can't be given 4 preseason games and a couple meh regular season games and call that an opportunity. That might work for your average mostly physical toolsy center. Strome is not that player. He needs to be in a rhythm. We've seen what he can do when circumstances line up. 10's of games not half a dozen then back to the A with you.
I hope this is Stromes year.
