The Arizona Coyotes made two trades the day of the NHL Trade Deadline, moving Jason Zucker to the Nashville Predators for a 2024 sixth-round pick and Matt Dumba as well as a 2025 seventh-round pick for a 2027 fifth-round pick. When the Coyotes signed both Zucker and Dumba to one-year contracts this past offseason, this is certainly not the return they maybe would have expected getting back for two established veterans. Assets wise the Coyotes got practically nothing which may disappoint a lot of fans who were looking forward to seeing what sort of value general manager Bill Armstrong could fetch. The market for Zucker and Dumba weren’t very high as they didn’t exactly exceed expectations through their short time in Arizona. 240307_CoachScrum However, it’s still disappointing seeing the draft picks the Coyotes got in return considering the sort of value they could have gotten if these two players performed up to the level they were supposed to. Really looking deep into these trades though, Armstrong had a clear plan. The Coyotes did not retain any of Zucker or Dumba’s salary which is a major thing to point out here. Zucker has a cap hit of $5.3 million while Dumba’s lands at $3.9 million, so the fact that Arizona does not retain any of that is pretty substantial. For context, the Coyotes now have $5.7 million projected cap space, their projected cap hit for the year is $78 million and have $61 million left in actual annual compensation for this year. Arizona has a lot of money to work with. Also, the cap is expected to rise to $87.7 million for next season which will only help the Coyotes down the road financially. Would the Coyotes have gotten better draft picks if they were willing to eat up some salary? Yes, they would have gotten a little bit more, but really not much. It was evident days leading up to the trade deadline that neither Zucker or Dumba would garner very much value and Armstrong seemed to prioritize getting rid of their entire salary as opposed to getting a little bit more value by retaining some salary. Armstrong didn’t have much to work with at all and deemed that it was just better to give up these players and save cash. That’s really all there is to read into this specific situation. It was a pretty uneventful trade deadline for Arizona, but it was a buyers market and unfortunately the Coyotes were sellers.
