- Slug: Sports-Coyotes Penalty, 650
- Photo included (thumbnail, caption below)
By MATT LAYMAN
Cronkite News
GLENDALE – The Arizona Coyotes roster has a new look to it.
This offseason, first-year general manager John Chayka made acquisitions at several positions, but his abundant defensive acquisitions in particular could improve a penalty kill that was among the worst in the league last season.
In fact, the Coyotes negated just 77.3% of their penalties in 2015-16, which was the third-worst “PK” percentage in the NHL.
In 2014-15, Arizona’s penalty kill of 76.7% was the second-worst in the NHL, and the year before that, it was the league’s fifth-worst.
“The PK has been an issue for us, not just last season but the last three seasons,” said veteran defenseman Zbynek Michalek. “If you want to be a playoff team, you have to improve that. Guys come and go, we’ve got some new faces, some guys that have played PK that left. We’ll have to make sure we get a good plan.”
Michalek, a right-side defenseman who was one of three Coyotes last year with more than 100 blocked shots (123), has been a staple of the Arizona defense during his three different stints with the Coyotes. Now, he’ll play alongside new faces like Alex Goligoski and Luke Schenn, the former a 10-year NHL veteran with a plus-21 rating last season and the latter a nine-year vet at just 26 years of age who had the fifth-most hits among NHL defenseman last year.
One incumbent Coyote in Oliver Ekman-Larsson has seen shorthanded time as well, but head coach Dave Tippett says the new roster additions will relieve some of the expectations put on the former All-Star.
“We relied on Oliver an awful lot to carry a big workload, both power play, penalty kill, and against top players,” said Tippett.
In each of the last four seasons, Ekman-Larsson has finished in the NHL’s top 20 in average time on ice per game.
“What Goligoski will do is enable us to manage some of O.E.L.’s minutes so we can get maximum capacity out of him, maybe a little less minutes from him,” Tippett said. “Goligoski will just be a solid player that can play in all of those situations.”
Goligoski saw time at both full strength and special teams with the Dallas Stars last year, averaging 23 minutes and 50 seconds of ice time per game.
“(The penalty kill) was a role that I always played and something that I like to do,” Goligoski said. “Hopefully if I get the chance to do that, I would love to help.
“I pride myself in being able to play in any situation and I think I should fit in good here with the ‘D’ that they already have here.”
When Chayka was asked if the offseason moves were done to bolster the penalty kill, he noted the importance of his goaltending.
“That’s part of it,” Chayka said of the acquisitions. “We’ve got (assistant coach) John Slaney here who I think does a phenomenal job with our PK. He worked super hard all summer to make sure he’s doing everything he can.
“I think between a healthy Mike Smith, Louie Domingue that’s going to take that next step, goaltending is a big part of it. I think as a group it will be much improved, and that’s something that we’ll need to do if we want to be successful this year.”
Still, Coach Tippett said he hopes Schenn and Goligoski can improve the Coyotes’ ability to eliminate shorthanded situations, each with his own style.
“Schenn is more a shot-blocker, a heavy guy,” he said. “Goligsoki is just a real smart player that reads plays really well. So we hope both of those guys will enhance our penalty kill a little bit.
“We’re going to try a couple different things in the structure of the penalty kill this year, it’s going to be a little bit different.”
