I think we have to stay the course, but there will be three to five changes next year. We can't stay status quo yet as we are not good enough, but talking about a rebuild is ridiculous.
I didn't say trade OEL. I said there will be three to five changes before next season starts. OEL is the least of our problems.There are changes every year. We just signed OEL to a long term deal, we aren't trading him 30 games later. We are still in the hunt for a playoff spot and its still early in the season. Tanking and getting rid of our best players is not the answer. If you think about it, the Yandle trade sunk us for years in a lot of ways, we should have kept him, same with OEL.
I think we should be looking to add a C. All ours suck at playing C.What about Stepan for Coyle. Minnesota is looking to add a center with Kiovu's recent injury.
At this point, if Adin Hill isn't THE story of the season, we're just doomed.
To make matters worse, our terrible hockey team has likely tanked Stepan's value. We traded a top 10 draft pick for him two years ago. Think Buffalo would consider moving Mittelstadt for him now? They'd laugh at us.
It would be a different story if Dvorak wasn't hurt, if he elevated his game this year, then you could absolutely get rid of Stepan, but with the uncertainty to the C enter ice position, you can't give up Stepan unfortunately.
Goligoski on the other hand should definitely be traded, along w/Demers in the off-season. We need to find a RHD replacement for Demers, so we can have at least 1 RHD on the team who can play in the top 4. Grabner is a keeper with this PK ability and no one will want Richardson.
Hammer just signed a contract extension with the Coyotes so you don't want to trade him as we want to keep the players that want to play here that play hard and are positive value like Hjalmarsson.
What to do with OEL, Hjalmarsson, Goligoski, and Stepan? To a lesser extent, Grabner, Demers and Richardson.
It's just depressing. Here we are again in December and are talking about the rest of the season like an extended training camp again. Every damn year is the same.Unless someone blows me away with an offer I'm not doing anything with big pieces till the offseason. Lot of season left to go. Coyotes have improved substantially from last season despite still being annoyingly inconsistent about it.
We're just not bottom 3 bad and the odds aren't that great lottery wise anyway, plus we don't win those. Trading them off to be worse doesn't make sense. The difference between 8th worst and 4th worst is about 3% in the odds. And like you said I don't see anyone running to the phone to give Chayka some great young talent for those guys.
At this time last season the coyotes had a .28% points percentage.
We're .500% right now.
Let some stuff play out. We need to see what Fischer and Chychrun do in the second half. Keller and Schmaltz flash in the pan or real chemistry? What's up with Galchenyuk? Hill taking someone's job?
Too many questions for me to want to just go around trading stuff mid season.
36-35-11 = 83pts and walk into lottery with 12th best odds. Take advantage of roughly 2.5% odds and move up to 2nd pick. Spend entire offseason reminding everyone on HF outside of Forum 40 that we were actually not the 2nd worst team. Zero non-Coyotes fans remember this. We are glad to have Kakko (who with Keller, becomes one of the four or five best players in Arizona franchise history) but are mildly irritated that even the professional guys like McKenzie and Button, etc keep saying we had the 2nd worst record and can’t remembwr that we actually moved way up.
Crowd-source point prediction, average of everyone who posted a point total in this thread (anyone who said just barely miss I called 92 points)
84.6 points
So just let an 82 point team get a year older and hope they get 20% better?
I'd listen on anyone. Noone looks irreplaceable.What to do with OEL, Hjalmarsson, Goligoski, and Stepan? To a lesser extent, Grabner, Demers and Richardson.