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The conditions are improving by the day for Jakob Chychrun and the Arizona Coyotes — or, more specifically, for facilitating his departure from the Coyotes.
He’s undeniably available as a trade commodity. He made peace with the idea of leaving before the 2022 NHL trade deadline. It didn’t happen, but he publicly confirmed in September that wants to “get moved to a situation with a chance to win and a team that’s fighting for the Cup.”
Thus you have a 24-year-old Clydesdale of a defenseman, 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, having led the NHL in goals at his position two years ago, carrying a criminally reasonable $4.6 million cap hit for three more seasons including this one, and he wants to be traded. Plus, his surgically repaired wrist is healing up to the point he can practice with the Coyotes, so he’s theoretically not too far from a return to game readiness.
On top of that? Many of the league’s wannabe contenders are bleeding scoring chances and/or weathering injuries to their D-corps, meaning their desperation to acquire an impact player like Chychrun might soon peak.
The conditions thus starting to feel optimal for Coyotes GM Bill Armstrong to explore a trade. We know the Ottawa Senators have been Chychrun’s most aggressive suitor to date. They’re one of the franchises best equipped to pursue him, but who else has the right mix of (a) urgent need and (b) prospect capital to offer Arizona right now?
These five destinations make the most sense to me.
The Favorites
OTTAWA SENATORS
The Sens activated playoff-aspiration mode in the summer with a slew of aggressive transactions, trading for Alex DeBrincat, signing Claude Giroux and trading for Cam Talbot. The enthusiasm around GM Pierre Dorion’s moves was legitimate but came with the caveat, “What about the defense?” The young blue line, led by Thomas Chabot and works in progress like Artem Zub, Erik Brannstrom and Jake Sanderson, badly needs a veteran in his prime to stabilize it.
Well, the Sens have one of the most obviously bursting prospect cupboards in the NHL. Whether it’s Ridly Greig, Tyler Boucher or, heaven forbid, Sanderson, they could concoct plenty of permutations to interest the Coyotes. They have the cap space – not that $4.6 million is a backbreaking AAV to inherit anyway. There’s a degree of hometown connection for Chychrun, too, as his father, former NHLer Jeff, grew up in Nepean in West Ottawa. The fit makes sense on many levels.
LOS ANGELES KINGS
The Kings’ situation is the Senators’ rebuild, one year deeper in. The Kings switched to buyer mode in summer 2021, adding Phillip Danault and Viktor Arvidsson to their forward corps, ended a four-year playoff drought last spring, and acquired another impact forward via trade in Kevin Fiala this past offseason. We know the franchise’s contention arrow points upward. We also know the Kings, like the Senators, are armed to the teeth with high-ceiling prospects. Quinton Byfield, Alex Turcotte, Brandt Clarke – the list goes on and on, and the Kings’ supreme depth allowed them to surrender prospect blue liner Brock Faber in the Fiala deal.
GM Rob Blake surely could find the right combination of promising youngsters to make a play for Chychrun. Like the Sens, the Kings have already been repeatedly linked to him anyway, dating back to last season. Cap space-wise, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a deal work. Maybe they have to kick in a young roster player with upside such as Carl Grundstrom or recent healthy scratch (!) Sean Durzi, but the bottom line is: The Kings are contenders and have the means to get Chychrun. Their 5-on-5 defense is also off to a weaker start than expected this season. They could use him sooner rather than later.
In the Hunt
TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS
The Leafs wouldn’t have even been a consideration a couple weeks ago. It’s not that they had a lack of need for a player like Chychrun. He’s exactly the type of well-rounded blue liner they could use, but the cap space was never going to allow it. Well, that might have changed with Jake Muzzin’s neck injury, which landed him on IR – not LTIR yet. Given his previous issues with his neck, it sounds like an injury that will have to be handled cautiously, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Muzzin eventually end up on LTIR.
Muzzin carries a $5.625 million cap hit so maybe the Leafs do in fact have the financial wiggle room to bid on Chychrun, especially if they envision Muzzin landing on LTIR for the rest of the regular season, keeping the team cap-compliant. Where they fall behind the Kings and Coyotes, of course, is in the possible trade package. It would have to involve one of Nick Robertson or Matthew Knies, if not both when we factor in the three seasons of control for Chychrun. The Leafs would essentially empty the clip of their prospect gun, but if you’re Kyle Dubas, not under contract next year, what do you have to lose at this point?
Long Shots
VANCOUVER CANUCKS
The Canucks are an unmitigated disaster to start 2022-23, setting an NHL record by blowing multi-goal leads in four straight defeats to open their campaign. When they re-signed veteran center J.T. Miller on a seven-year, $56 million deal this offseason, they sent a message that they weren’t ready to fold after a playoff miss last season. It made a fair amount of sense given they played better than .600 hockey after Bruce Boudreau took over as coach in December 2021.
Now we have a team that is supposed to bounce back as a Pacific Division contender having players-only meetings in October. The desperation meter should be ready to break in Vancouver, and Chychrun is the type of talent that could turn a team around. Getting him would be relatively complicated, though. Most of the Canucks’ best prospects of the past half decade have graduated to the NHL and are inrreplaceable pieces of the core, from Quinn Hughes to Thatcher Demko to Elias Pettersson. A deal with Arizona would require GM Patrik Allvin to sell the Coyotes on package laden with draft picks and augmented with a young, established NHLer in the vein of (healthy scratched Thursday) Nils Hoglander or Vasily Podkolzin. The Canucks would have to offload some cap space in the deal, too.
FLORIDA PANTHERS
It’s not a matter of the Panthers wanting Chychrun. They’ve been the team most commonly linked to him since the trade rumors began last season. He grew up in Florida, and his father works as a Panthers’ TV analyst there. It’s more of a hometown fit than the Senators are. The Panthers’ depleted defense badly needs a top-four difference maker after the team traded MacKenzie Weegar and now that Aaron Ekblad is out long term with a groin injury.
How do the Panthers get Chychrun? They don’t have the cap space. Ekblad won’t be out long enough to be a season-long LTIR casualty. Theoretically, they could ask Arizona to take Patric Hornqvist to make the money work, but he has an eight-team no-trade list. Even if the Coyotes somehow weren’t on it, they would command some nice draft compensation for taking his cap hit, and the Panthers are fresh out of high picks. After making some aggressive win-now deals over the past couple seasons, they don’t own a first-round selection until 2026.
Can you lure the Coyotes in with second-round picks and a prospect like Grigori Denisenko or Mackie Samoskevich? Not likely. Not when other suitors can top that. For the Panthers to make it interesting, it might require dangling a significant young core player such as Anton Lundell, and I don’t see them wanting to do that, either, so the Cats are underdogs to get Chychrun right now.
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