Équipe: 2021-22 Équipe personnalisée

Date de création initiale: 13 févr. 2022

Publié: 16 févr. 2022

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

Loudly trumpeted in the local media, but probably not widely disseminated nationally for fear of League-wide derision, last week the Arizona Coyotes announced that they will start playing their home games in the new Arizona State University arena in the 2022 – 2023 season. Capacity: slightly over 5,000 (per reports, because it hasn’t been completed yet).

This is unsustainable. Just imagine some billionaire reserving the entire joint for his wedding reception during a home game.

Obviously, this franchise needs to be disbanded and moved elsewhere – say, to Quebec.

Here’s how a dispersal draft would work best, in my humble but incandescent opinion:

All teams except Seattle would place two players into the dispersal draft pool. (Any combination of forwards, defensemen or goalies.) All players would have to be under contract for both the 2022 – 2023 and the 2023 – 2024 seasons and not have an operative NMC clause in their contract.

Arizona/Quebec would designate which players from its current 2022 – 2023 roster (including farm system) it wanted to keep, up to a maximum of 19. I’m gonna guess Chychrun, Crouse, Emberson, Gostisbehere, Guenther, Hayton, Hults, Jenik, Keller, Kolyachonok, Prosvetov, Schmaltz, Soderstrom, Timmins and Vejmelka would be retained, at the very least.

Along the lines used for the waiver wire or amateur prospect draft, teams in inverse order of finish would then select from the players remaining from the current Arizona roster or pass. If a team used such a selection, both of the players it had placed in the dispersal pool would be available for selection by Arizona. (This is to avoid a team like San Jose putting Burns and Karlsson in the dispersal pool and then selecting a minor-leaguer from Arizona, thus forcing the two old stiffs with the huge cap hits onto the new team.)

Arizona would then get to pick one player from each team remaining in the dispersal pool. I've made several selections based upon the guys I think some teams would consider the LAST guys that they'd want to keep.

All players not selected by Arizona/Quebec or other teams (i.e., all players remaining from the prior Coyotes roster or in the dispersal pool) would then become unrestricted free agents.


Some teams, like St. Louis or Winnipeg, could use this process (by adding a mid-level draft pick) to disembarrass themselves of no-longer-wanted players.

The farm system is shown on the Taxi Squad list.

Suggestions for the ONE player from your team that would be picked by this franchise gleefully entertained.