Bill Armstrong for GM of the Year
The Arizona Coyotes may not know where they will call home next season or how they will finance it, but one thing is certain with this organization, Bill Armstrong has and will continue to improve the Coyotes roster and organizational depth.
This summer Bill Armstrong looked around the league and used the Arizona Coyotes' most valuable asset, cap space, to completely fleece teams and stockpile draft picks for the upcoming 2022 draft. The first offseason move he made was to take advantage of the Philadelphia Flyers and take Shayne Gostisbehere off their hands who recently fell out of favour with the organization. The Coyotes received a 2nd and 7th round pick in the 2022 draft for taking the $4.5mil defenseman off of the Flyers' hands for the small price of «Future Considerations». Next Bill Armstrong took advantage of Jim Benning as his seat was already hot this summer and traded away overpriced defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson for salary dump players and a 2021 1st Round Pick (Dylan Guenther), and a 2022 2nd Round Pick.
The next cunning move Armstrong made was to call Joe Sakic and the Colorado Avalanche and help address their goaltending depth by trading them Darcy Kuemper. Arizona did have to retain half of Kuemper's salary as Colorado is near the ceiling, but Armstrong as he's done in all these trades made sure he got draft capital in return and received a 2022 1st Round Pick. Shortly before the season started the Montreal Canadiens realized they needed to address their center depth. Armstrong again knowing the desperation of the Canadiens made them overpay and the Coyotes received another 2022 1st.
Now that the Coyotes were out a starting goaltender Armstrong signed the one goalie who would help assure a lottery pick for his team in the coming draft. There was no team worse than the Buffalo Sabers during the 2020-2021 season so they let their starting goalie Carter Hutton walk in free agency and he was exactly the type of goalie Bill Armstrong knew would help keep his team in the bottom of the standings.
Going into this year's trade deadline the Coyotes will have 18 players on expiring contracts. A few of them can be traded for depth to a contending team at that deadline with players such as Phil Kessel, Antoine Roussell, Lawson Crouse, and Ryan Dzingel up for grabs.
Bill Armstrong will look to build through the draft this year which will be easy as the Coyotes have amassed THREE 1st round picks, and FIVE 2nd round picks for what is be touted as one of the deepest drafts in recent memory. The only other thing left for Armstrong to do is to acquire the draft lottery king Taylor Hall and ensure the Coyotes will win the draft lottery.
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