TEMPE, Ariz. — Bill Armstrong has not minced words about the Arizona Coyotes rebuild.
The general manager has been up front and honest about his desire to build a team through the NHL Draft since he was hired Sept. 17, 2020.
Since then, the Coyotes have traded veteran players like defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larssonforwards Conor Garland and Derek Stepanand goalie Darcy Kuemper to acquire draft picks. He has used salary cap space to take on other teams’ unwanted contracts with the caveat being that they also provide more draft capital in the transaction.
Arizona has made a combined 24 picks in the three drafts since Armstrong took over as GM (2020, 2021 and 2022), including four in the first round (forwards Logan Cooley, Conor Geekie and Dylan Guentherand defenseman Maverick Lamoureux) and five in the second. They currently have 18 picks in the first three rounds of the next three drafts.
Armstrong said it feels like the Coyotes are starting from scratch even though they’re in their 26th season in the desert. He likes it that way.
“We were able to make some trades and get out of some lengthy contracts, which enabled us to get into what we’re talking about,” Armstrong said in an interview with NHL.com prior to the Coyotes home opener at Mullett Arena on Oct. . 28. “We just got out of salary cap hell and it was like a new light because you can really start again and just build from within and through the draft. That was really exciting for us. And now you get to really start it from scratch and start building through the draft. That part has been exciting to go back and build a team.”
He’s brought on experienced advisors who have been through rebuilds.
Larry Pleau is the senior adviser to the GM. He was the GM when the St. Louis Blues began their rebuild in 2006, which eventually culminated in a Stanley Cup championship 13 years later.
Darryl Plandowski is the Coyotes director of amateur scouting. He was an amateur scout for the Tampa Bay Lightning for 12 seasons, helping to build them into a Stanley Cup championship team.
Alan Hepple is the director of pro scouting. He spent 19 seasons scouting with the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche before going to the Coyotes prior to the 2021 NHL Draft.
“We are trying to do it with some experience and through the draft,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong elaborated on the Coyotes plan, his vision, reconciling patience with his competitive side and much more in a wide-ranging Q&A with NHL.com.
Are you finding yourself able to go through the rebuild with a degree of patience in-game? I understand patience is required, but can you feel that when watching the team play?
“Well, the hardest part is that everyone here, including our coaching staff, we’re all competitors and we didn’t get to the highest level in the world because we’re not competitors. You have to, at times, remove yourself and look in the big picture, what’s coming down, have some vision. That’s a really hard thing because everybody gets highly competitive. You see a lot of rebuilds go the wrong way when they press the go button too early. We’ve done a lot of studies on teams, too, and I think that helps us [Chicago] Blackhawks, we studied the Blues, we studied the [Pittsburgh] Penguins and some of the other teams that are coming up, just keeping an eye on how they’ve dealt with salaries and what you need to get out of the rebuild to be done exactly with it. We set a goal to push ourselves and try to get into the playoffs within five to six years.”
Do you look at those situations, the Blackhawks, the Penguins, the Lightning, the New York Rangers, as the hope?
“Tampa Bay, with the arena situation and a warm place to play, they’re something we look at when we’re going through this. We just have volumes of picks probably unlike any other team has had. We’re trying to cut you a thousand different ways, kind of like the St. Louis Blues, where you have more higher-end players on your third or fourth line too.”
One thing we were discussing before doing this Q&A was the way practices are run and what has changed in regards to that. I’d like you to expand on that because it was interesting how you’re using analytics to determine how practice is run. How does it work?
“It’s really to generate scoring. We’re a team that they’ll say, you don’t generate enough offense through the players that are on your team. There is just not enough people scoring, so we have to find ways to create scoring through our team. We look at every analytical possibility with scoring and try to teach it to our players. We try to structure practice and our skills around analytics. Whether it’s wrapping a puck, where are your best odds to put the puck once you get around the net that it will create a scoring chance? If you shoot from weird angles, does it increase your scoring chance? Putting two guys in front of the net instead of one guy. Where are the funnels? Where do the pucks kick out ? We try to design a lot of our practice and a lot of our skills work around analytics to help us create offense.”
And you switched it too, by going to analytic-based drills in practice warmups. Why?
“That’s our big thing with skills. We’ve tried to get away from skating around and doing nothing for the first 10 minutes of practice. We’re trying to create voluntary skills sessions where the player goes on the ice and for the first 10 to 15 minutes, every drill on that ice is based on skills and analytics.”
How have the players responded to these methods?
“Really good. I’ll tell you a story, back in my coaching days I tried to do a skills practice and no one was into it. That was 20 years ago. Nowadays the young players have all grown up going to skills practice and just working on a skill. So, these guys are in a different era and they’re way more skilled than any other era in the NHL. Everybody can shoot a puck, but I think they’ve really embraced this. We haven’t t perfected it, but we’re getting to the point where we’re learning from what we’re doing, and we’re trying to grow it and make it better.”
So, it’s not just using analytics in order to create a lineup and build a team, put lines together. It’s using the numbers available to you to really build habits.
“Habits, yes. The more you can bring young players in, whether it’s in development camp or not, and teach them [that] if you do this your odds of scoring go up, it kind of gets engrained in them. Sometimes a natural hockey player already has that engrained in him, but it doesn’t hurt to teach your entire organization about it. Then coaches expand and it grows from there. The greatest thing about the game, and it’s probably in the best spot it has ever been in as far as speed and scoring, is that it’s always evolving. As soon as you figure out how to score from one area it changes. We’re not the only ones in the NHL thinking like this. We’re not reinventing the wheel here because scoring is going way up and it’s not a secret. People are studying what is making the scoring go up.”
Have you reconciled in your mind the difference between winning and rebuilding and how to understand a game might not end up in your favor, but it might move you a few steps ahead from where you were?
“Yeah, well, the way we look at it [it] is we might not win every game, but we celebrate the small victories. Whether it’s our culture changing in practice, players gaining weight, jumping higher during the course of a year, us getting through a season with a player and his results are going up all year long. There are small victories for us. It’s a long haul. To win a Cup it could take anywhere from 11-14 years. There’s been a few teams that have jumped in and done it in 5-7, but St. Louis, Tampa, Colorado, it’s 11-14 years in a rebuild. It’s a long, slow burn and you just have to be patient with it.”
How do you like your life here in Arizona?
“It’s good, it’s good. I really enjoy the process. It’s a little different than you think. The GM job, everybody thinks it’s all about managing the exact players and the team, but there’s a whole world behind that. It’s a consuming job. It is the greatest job I’ve ever had. I wake up every day and love where I’m at. It’s really about the people that surround you in doing this job and their enthusiasm and energy. I think a lot of people join the fight because it’s something unique and it’s exciting. And, for amateur scouts, they’ve made probably more picks in the last two years than they [have] in a long time. They’re really excited about that. And just to see some of the young kids come into the lineup, everybody has had an impact, whether it’s off the waiver wire like [Connor] Ingram, [Juuso] Valimakior our European guys like [J.J.] Moserour Western guys draft Guenther, it’s just been truly an exciting time and it’s getting better.”
And ideally, you’ll get to see it all the way through until it becomes something special, and it could become something special in a brand new building in a few years. Is it planned for the team to be on the timeline of what the Coyotes hope is a new home?
“It is, yes. It is. My dad would always say, ‘You’ve got to have some luck in life, son.’ But I always felt the harder you work the luckier you get. We got fortunate with the flat cap, and we took advantage of it with bad contracts and put some picks in our favor. We’ve tried to take advantage of that and strategically as well. placing some really good scouts in positions to make some picks too. It’s good stuff.”
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