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By Sean Brennan
Cronkite News
PHOENIX – Shortly after Wednesday’s overtime win over the Vancouver Canucks, Arizona Coyotes players celebrated in the visitors’ dressing room in the bowels of Rogers Arena.
Forward Liam O’Brien handed a football meant to symbolize a “game ball” given to the squad’s best player that night to rookie forward Logan Cooley, who scored the game-winning goal, as cheers from his teammates filled the room. Amid the endless saga of recent relocation rumors, the latest of which came Wednesday and hinted at the franchise potentially relocating to Salt Lake City, none of it seemed to matter during that very moment.
While much of the sports world was riveted by rampant speculation that this might be the team’s final season in Arizona, the players seemed unfazed by the off-ice drama. After all, they’d just taken the Canucks, one of the NHL’s elite teams this season, to overtime before Cooley lit the lamp with just over a minute left in the frame to cement a 4-3 victory.
“Impressive, I think that’s the word I have,” Coyotes coach André Tourigny said. “They’ve battled, they’ve fought on the bench. The attitude, the desire to win, the pushing each other and the focus. That was really good, that’s fun to see our team play like that.”
With so many reports swirling around the team and providing a grim outlook for its future in the Grand Canyon State, Wednesday’s shocking news was nothing the Coyotes haven’t dealt with before.
Speculation began circulating when the franchise announced plans to play at the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena starting in 2023-24, but again picked up steam in January when NHL Players’ Association executive director Marty Walsh said the “clock is ticking” on the Coyotes.
This statement coincided with Smith Entertainment Group, the parent company of the NBA’s Utah Jazz, formally requesting the NHL initiate an expansion process to bring a team to Salt Lake City.
On Jan. 24 — coincidentally the same date of Walsh’s comments and the Utah news — the Coyotes lost their first of 14 consecutive games. Entering the losing streak, they were firmly in the playoff mix, only two points out of the Western Conference’s second and final wild-card spot. Fast forward to March 1, when Arizona won its first game in over a month and sat 17 points removed from the last team in.
There were likely many factors to such a lengthy skid, but the ongoing noise certainly didn’t help matters. So many outside distractions constantly floating around are tough for any team to deal with, never mind one of the youngest teams in the league.
“We’ve been around (the noise) before,” Tourigny said. “I said today that when there were the first rumors with Salt Lake City, I can tell you exactly the date because (it was) January 24, and we were just finishing four wins in the last five games, and then we went on a 14-game losing streak. So we did not manage those distractions well the first time, so it’s not everybody that has a second chance. We had a chance to do better this time, and I really liked the effort …
“If we wouldn’t have had that skid, we would be playing for the playoffs. So, you know, that would be a great advantage … I think it’s not everybody that has a second opportunity, a second chance. We have a second chance (at) the end of our season to react to adversity.”
The Coyotes seem to be taking full advantage of this second chance. Since March 1, they have posted an 11-9-0 record and have provided fans with plenty of excitement, scoring 73 goals, the league’s second highest tally during that stretch.
This late-season success won’t ultimately pay off for the Coyotes, as they have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs for over two weeks. However, with three games left on the schedule, Arizona has an opportunity to finish over .500 in its final 23 games of the season, showing that the group has banded together and learned from previous experiences of dealing with adversity.
“It’s always tough when the media’s going around saying we’re going to be here, we’re going to be there,” Cooley said. “Honestly, we just need to stick together as a group, and that’s what we did. There’s been no quit in this team all year, whether that was when we were going through that losing streak, the arena news. It’s a pretty special group we have in there and it’s fun to compete out there and battle with those guys.”
Throughout all of the chaos that’s surrounded the franchise over the past couple of years, the Coyotes have never wavered from their commitment to remaining in the Valley and continuing to grow the game of hockey in Arizona. After their proposed arena and entertainment district in Tempe was rejected in a public vote last May, it was announced in February the Coyotes intend to build a venue on a 110-acre piece of state trust land in North Phoenix, which will go up for auction on June 27.
The team’s more immediate focus, however, will be on the three remaining contests of the 2023-24 campaign, the last of which is scheduled for April 17 against the Edmonton Oilers in Phoenix — which could be the Coyotes’ final time calling the desert home. But Arizona will look to build off its latest win, one that will be a highlight of a chaotic rookie season for Cooley.
“With all the news going around and crap going, we were resilient and came together as a group,” Cooley said. “We put the rest of it aside, just had fun, and it paid off. It was a heck of a game, that was one of the most fun games I think we’ve played in this year.”
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