I wouldn't to be completely honest with you. We already have a depleted prospect pool why spend more on a player who's been regressing 4 years in a row?

I don't really think this gets it done for Arizona, but I have no idea what you're looking at if you think Chychrun has been regressing for four years in a row. You don't even need to get into his underlying numbers, like he set a career high in goals and points just last year. Led all defensemen in goals and was 11th in points on a defensively minded 2020-21 Coyotes team.

Of course 18 goals number 1 defenseman in scoring even though he was tied for 11th in shots. Giveaway the puck 40 times a year on average even had 37 giveaways in 47 games he played last year, but I digress to his 141 shots in 47 games with only 7 goals and his high danger shot percentage being in the bottom 4th of the league. 1 season doesn't make him great. I'm not meaning scoring specifically mean his defense, and his puck possession which is what we need. Leddy is a great puck possession defenseman, Chychrun is not. Also not to mention he gets injured every single year. He has not ever played a full season, which to me also doesn't make him Eichel value worth and even Eichel isn't worth Eichel, but please do indulge to tell me more if you have anything else to add so I can research it more heavily. See if you can sway my thoughts on him

I mean I agree that paying a Jack Eichel-like ransom for him would be not good, I'm just saying that he definitely hasn't regressed every year for the last 4 years. He regressed in 21-22 for sure and you definitely can't hand waive that off, though I think there should be some asterisks given the kind of fundamental shift the Coyotes went under between 20-21 and 21-22, but that's really all I was trying to say.

But if you're interested in my thoughts on Chychrun feel free to read the short novel (lol) below.

I agree that we don't necessarily need a defenseman who is a torrid goal scorer- we have a potent enough offense as it is. And I think any reasonable analysis of Chychrun after his big 20-21 would have been able to tell you that he couldn't keep that up. A quick glance at his sh% and you can see, he was way outperforming his career averages in 20-21 and that's bound for some regression. (career prior to 20-21 he had shot 6%, 20-21 he shot 10%, 21-22 he shot 5%). And a word on that 5%- 7 goals on 141 shots is not bad for a defenseman at all. That's a higher shooting percentage last year than Dougie Hamilton, Kris Letang, Zach Werenski, Moritz Seider, Thomas Chabot, Miro Heiskanen, Brent Burns, Jeff Petry, and Morgan Reilly. And that's bad? Like to me that's only a critique of him if you think the 18 goal Chychrun was what he was always going to be. A Chychrun that shoots between 5-6% is still a really good offensive defensemen.

As for the high danger shot percentage: I don't know where your stat is coming from, but my view is this. For a defenseman to take a higher danger shot, two things have to happen. 1. The defenseman needs to activate, moving deeper into the zone from beyond the point. 2. The defenseman has to either carry the puck all that way himself (extremely difficult to do for any defenseman not named Cale Makar) or the defenseman has to receive a high danger pass. The coyotes were maybe the worst team in the league at generating high danger passes, as seen by this chart from AllThreeZones. https://imgur.com/a/usNmuB1 The Blues, on the other hand, were one of the best in the league at generating them.

Here's a clip of every Chychrun goal from this past season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erG6FzLbYzw&t=13s Notice how the vast majority of these seven goals are scored. When Chychrun scores, it's because he activated deep into the zone (something he does well) and he got a rare pass into the high danger area. On teams well equipped to pass into the high danger area, Chychrun will have more genuine opportunities to convert.

But this is somewhat moot because yes if the Blues are acquiring him it wouldn't be because they need more offense from the blue line. And we agree on what they do need from their blue line- tighter defense and stronger puck possession. One the first point, I would argue that Chychrun actually does a really good job defensively. The giveaways this year aren't good, but I think that's a very surface level view of it. Much like his goal scoring, that many giveaways is not really outside the norm for defensemen who play a lot. Over the last three years, the top defensemen in giveaways/60 are a lot of guys most consider some of the most stalwart defensive players- Weegar, Pelech, Hanifin, McAvoy, Tanev, Lindell, Oleksiak. All of those guys have more giveaways/60 over the last three years than Chychrun. And that's /60, so that takes into account that some of those guys play more or less than Chychrun. The thing that makes this not a big deal, to me, is that Chychrun is a really good rush defender. If he turns over the puck, he's got a really good ability to recover. He's got excellent gap control, he defends the middle of the defensive zone really well and he's is one of the best defensemen in the league at winning puck battles. Here's a great compilation of his defensive game against LA last year that illustrates some of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-gw40izf2c&t=18s.

There's three things that give me pause on Chychrun. 1 is the price. The skills I've lain out about are not worthy of a Jack Eichel like return, even given his age and his contract. 2. is the puck possession. He's fine, but he's not great. But let's be clear- Nick Leddy is not good at this either. Look at their puck possession stats at 5v5 over the last three seasons:

Chychrun vs Leddy (2019-2022)
Corsi For%: 48.15 vs 45.51
Expected Goals For %: 48.21 vs 47.68
Actual Goals For %: 47.78 vs 45.9

This is neither player's strong suit. But at least with Chychrun you're not risking age-related decline like you would be with Leddy.

The last thing that gives me pause is his hockey sense. When he gets in trouble, he's not super patient. I don't see him as a strong decision maker with passing, and he does have a tendency to take low danger shot attempts from the point where other plays might be better. I had this critique of Faulk on Carolina, and he seems to have grown out of this tendency in St. Louis, so maybe it's a factor of "who else are you going to pass it to on the Arizona Coyotes really", but it's a critique nonetheless.

All that being said, this is absolutely not a player in decline at all though, and if the price is right he could definitely help the Blues, much much more than Nick Leddy, and he could be a staple on our Blue line for years to come. He's not an elite defenseman, but I think he's a low end #1 yet and that's not nothing.

I sure enough read through all of it. I wasn't a fan of the trade for leddy anyway. I was more invested in trying for Lindholm who was overpaid by a lot as well. Leddy was a solid puck possession player for us, but I never wanted him back, and definitely not for more than 3 years being he's 31, and not more than 3-4 M. Quite literally would be an overpay by a lot. I've come to somewhat assess Chychrun based on full production so not only am I looking at the basic stats but his heat charts are definitely not something I like which is also why I said he regressed. That and his corsi his corsi has been way too inconsistent for him to be considered elite for a heavy heavy haul. Being gets injured a ton is also why I don't invest a ton into a deal with him. So thing with high danger. You don't need to be by the faceoff circle or the slot. It's simply because when he can't make a good decision he either rushes a very low danger shot that does nothing gets pressured into a giveaway or yeah makes a very dumb pass. Which is why I hesitate. Chychrun does fit the ideal build we need for an LD 6"2 210 because we don't need another small defenseman. I do hesitate because if he has that Faulk type of let down and doesn't actually do anything positive for the team. Is he actually going to have the confidence to come back up? Because with his contract you don't want to waste that money when you could put it somewhere else where it can be used productively. I'm not saying he needs to be a Norris candidate every year, but I also don't want him to be a liability at times like Scandella, Parayko, Bouwmeester, Russell, Polak, etc. have been in the past. Because it doesn't work especially in playoffs. Game has gotten a lot faster and we need to catch up in speed or find a way to by pass speed with more grit. Which we have done before but it's not exactly easy to do.