My gut feeling (based on no tangible sources so you can feel free to not read the rest of my post) is that Arizona is a popular landing spot for free agents on principle. This is also not exclusive to the Coyotes and certainly applies to the Suns, Cardinals, and Diamondbacks. It worked once for the Diamondbacks, but since Arizona sports teams have a long history of having owners who are either cheap or broke (or both, I'm looking at you Robert Sarver), we simply can't afford to pay them fair market value. John Tavares signed his big contract with the Leafs but I'd be willing to bet that he'd have considered us if we were capable of matching the terms of the contract Toronto offered him (but we weren't so it's a moot point).
Semi-sarcastic jab at our inability to pay for talent that's necessary to turn this team around that I spouted to a friend earlier tonight during our game: "Let's be real guys. If we had won that draft lottery and drafted McDavid, we'd have traded him by now because we couldn't afford to sign him to 8 years/$12.5m AAV."
We've had probably more than our fair share of bad luck as a franchise, but our consistent problems start and end with basically having no money. If not for the cap floor, we'd be pathetic, and even then we've found "creative" ways to reach the cap floor without actually paying out that many dollars on at least a few occasions.
