Coyotes hoping Schmaltz can provide spark
It’s going to take more than one player to fix the fundamental issues the Coyotes are trying to address right now. But in acquiring Nick Schmaltz from the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, the Coyotes believe as though they’ve made themselves a better team.
It’s hard to argue, at least in the short term, that the Coyotes are indeed an improved club. Although it looks bad on paper to part ways with two former firstround picks in Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini, neither player was doing much for the team and Schmaltz should touch all aspects of the Coyotes’ game in some way.
Schmaltz is no superstar, and the Coyotes don’t necessarily expect him to be. What they are hoping is that the 22-year-old forward can provide a spark to a team that is playing some of its worst hockey in recent memory.
On the heels of consecutive blowouts at home, the
Coyotes have been outscored 11-2 in their past two contests. They’ll board a plane to St. Paul, Minn. on Monday for a two-game road trip against the Minnesota Wild and Nashville Predators in which they’ll try to snap a four-game losing streak.
The Coyotes are in need of some kind of spark. Whether or not Schmaltz can provide such a jolt remains to be seen, but Coyotes President of Hockey Operations and General Manager John Chayka felt he needed to be proactive in addressing the team’s struggles.
“Certainly the recent performance of the team and the players is a part of it,” Chayka said. “Obviously a move of this magnitude is not done in isolation or in a vacuum; it’s done with the whole body of work in consideration. … I think we owe it to our fans. We’re still in the hunt here. We still have an opportunity in this division to compete.
“For whatever reason, we haven’t been able to produce as much offense as we need to and we think this makes us a better offensive team. It’s not on one player, it’s not on those two players, but this is where we’re starting.”
Schmaltz totaled 52 points (21 goals, 31 assists) last season, more points than Strome and Perlini combined for during the 2017-18 campaign. The former college standout at North Dakota has seen a dip in production this season, with just 11 points (two goals, nine assists) in 23 games. That’s still just one less point than Strome and Perlini have combined for this season.
The Coyotes view Schmaltz as a playmaking forward with the ability to play center and wing. Schmaltz is lauded for his refined defensive responsibility at his young age, a trait that will surely not go unnoticed in Rick Tocchet’s system of play. Minn.
The Arizona Coyotes (9-11-2) embark on a two-game road trip beginning with a stop in St. Paul, Minn., against the Minnesota Wild (14-7-2) on Tuesday at XCel Energy Center. … The Wild have won each of their last two games and will be wrapping up a threegame homestand in which they have already compiled a 2-0-0 record. … This is the second of three meetings between the teams this season and the second time the Coyotes will travel to Minnesota; the Coyotes suffered a 2-1 defeat at XCel Energy Center on Oct. 16. … The Wild are led in scoring by forwards Mikael Granlund with 20 points (10 goals, 13 assists), Zach Parise with 20 points (10 goals, 10 assists) and Mikko Koivu with 19 points (four goals, 15 assists). … Both Antti Raanta (undisclosed) and Darcy Kuemper (lower body) are currently day-to-day for the Coyotes.
Tocchet said his initial thought is to play Schmaltz at center, although when asked what that could mean for someone like Alex Galchenyuk, Tocchet was non-committal.
“We’re going to have to revisit that, where we want to go with that and who we want at center,” Tocchet said. “We’re struggling in certain areas of our game and that’s something we’re going to have to look at.”
Strome and Perlini were two players in particular whose struggles reached a boiling point with the Coyotes. During his conference call with the media on Monday, Chayka repeated the phrases “hope” and “patience” when it came to two players selected in the top 15 of their respective drafts.
For the Coyotes, that river of patience ran dry, and hoping just wasn’t enough.
“For us, there’s a key difference between patience and hope,” Chayka said. “I don’t think hope is a good longterm strategy. I thought we showed the requisite patience for these guys in terms of their development. You go through the checklist as an organization of helping them through their development path, but at the same time they have to show progress on that development path and eventually become the players you’d hope they’d become when you drafted them.
“In this scenario, with these circumstances and this situation, we felt we were being more hopeful than anything. We just felt that, when you’re looking at your options, I think I owe it to our fans to see if there’s anything out there to improve our group. Obviously the alternative is to hold and to hope, but you run the risk of assets expiring.”
The trade marks Chayka’s fourth with the Blackhawks since taking over as GM in 2016, so Schmaltz will have some familiar faces waiting for him when he joins the Coyotes on Tuesday in Minnesota, including former Chicago teammates Vinnie Hinostroza, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Richard Panik and Jordan Oesterle, as well as friendly faces from his youth in Christian Fischer and Christian Dvorak.
“Yeah, (the trade) was a shock,” Schmaltz said in a conference call Monday. “But, you know, at the same time I know a lot of players on the Coyotes and guys I’ve played with in previous teams, so it’s really exciting. It’s a young group and a lot of skill up front, so I’m really excited to get started and get going here in the next couple of days.”