With the contract extensions of the coaching staff as well as general manager Bill Armstrong, the Arizona Coyotes are ready to move into phase two of their rebuild.
The Arizona Coyotes are all bought into their young core as well as the management and coaching staff.
This offseason, the Coyotes gave contract extensions to the whole coaching staff and general manager Bill Armstrong.
Coyotes president and CEO Xavier Gutierrez feels that last year’s results are a huge reason to believe in both Armstrong and coach André Tourigny.
“Well I mean the results were there,” Gutierrez said. “Obviously last year in a brand new facility that no one knew what to expect, we had the eighth best home record and we knew that we would continue to build this foundation through young players that would continue to develop.”
The Coyotes have been in a rebuilding phase over the past few seasons but Gutierrez feels that the organization is ready to take the next step and start being more competitive.
“Now we've hit that second phase which we knew we would, which is to continue to not only develop our young players, but to attract great talent,” Gutierrez said. “You saw Nick Bjugstad, he was part of our team, we traded him and he chose to come back, he wanted to be part of what we are building and for us that is the next part.
“We are very excited because we have a coaching staff that is now locked up and can be creating stability. We have obviously our general manager who has done an incredible job of acquiring draft assets, putting a scouting department together to really identify great young players like Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther who we are very very high on but then now also to go out and bring in the Matt Dumbas, the Alex Kerfoots, the Jason Zuckers and then to trade for folks like Sean Durzi.”
Arizona’s aggressive approach this offseason provides hope to a team that has not been very competitive for multiple years.
Gutierrez has confidence that this could be the year where the Coyotes start to turn everything around and feels that phase two of the rebuild is underway.
“We're very excited,” Gutierrez said. “We have very high hopes for what is this next step that we're taking as a hockey team.”