Coyotes History Throwback, Vol. VIII: 2003-2004 Season

There’s Only One Word to Describe the Coyotes Eighth Season- DISASTROUS !

This season would go down as the second worst season since the team moved to Phoenix from Winnipeg.

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Their 22-36-18-6 record put them in 13th place in the Western Conference, nowhere near contention for a playoff spot.

The season didn’t look that way from the start, though. Their record after 41 games was a respectable 16-12-11-2 for 45 points, and if they hadn’t completely crashed and burned over the last 41 games they could have approached the 95 points they accomplished two seasons before.

To illustrate just how poorly they played in the last half of the season- get ready for this… 6-24-7-4 for a meager 23 points! Not sure where coach Bob Francis lost control of the ship, but it went down HARD.

So hard, in fact, that it cost Coach Francis his job. On Feb. 24, 2004, he was relieved of his coaching duties and replaced by Rick Bowness for the remainder of the season. Bowness had worse success than Francis, though, tallying a 2-12-3-3 record over the last 20 games. Nothing to write home about.

To cover the statistics for this underachieving team: Shane Doan had a pretty decent year with 68 points (27 G, 41 A), making him the leading scorer. Ladislav Nagy played just 55 games, but was able to tabulate 24 goals, 28 assists. Daymond Langkow was next with 21 goals, 31 assists to tie Nagy.

If there was one bright spot to this season to forget, it was goaltender Brian Boucher- who set a modern-era NHL record with five consecutive shutouts. Boucher accumulated 332:01 minutes of not allowing a goal. It just seems ironic that he accomplished this feat on such a mediocre team. For that I HAD to use his photo as my feature image… it’s hard to be that good on even the BEST team, much less on this season’s Coyotes squad.

Other news during this season:

On July 22, 2003- Teppo Numminen, who had played his entire 15 year career for Coyotes/Jets, was traded to the Dallas Stars for Mike Sillinger and a conditional draft choice.
On Dec. 27,2003- The Coyotes finally opened their new arena in Glendale. In front of a standing room only crowd of 19,052, the Yotes dropped a 3-1 decision to Nashville.
On Dec. 31, 2003- The Coyotes notched their first victory in their new arena with a 4-0 shutout of the rival L.A. Kings.
On Feb. 9, 2004- Goalie Sean Burke was traded to the Flyers along with Branko Radivojevic (now there’s a great hockey player name), whom they signed on 6-19-2001 as a free agent. The Flyers also received the rights to Ben Eager in exchange for Mike Comrie.

UP NEXT : 2004-2005 Season… RECOVERY MODE WITH THE ‘GREAT ONE’ TO THE RESCUE ?

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