Arizona Coyotes Ownership Needs To Invest More Into Team

Arizona Coyotes are being hurt by IceArizona’s lack of action

The Arizona Coyotes ownership group, IceArizona purchased the team in 2013, ending speculation that the team would be re-located to another city. Although if you’re a Coyotes fan that could have been a good thing – in some ways, it hasn’t shown any improvement to the team, or its’ success on the ice.

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For the past two seasons, during the free agency signing period, we all watched helplessly as OTHER teams stepped up and acquired good NHL talent to improve their teams, and pursue their goal of winning a CUP. Not the Arizona Coyotes.

Take this year for instance. Their payroll was well UNDER the salary cap basement, which they were required to meet. So, what did they do? They traded Sam Gagner (which was fine…) for Nicklas Grossmann, AND Chris Pronger’s contract worth $4.921 million against the cap, while only costing the team $525,000 a year in true salary. I mean if the Arizona Coyotes had that much salary cap space, why didn’t they sign a good free agent, instead of a NHL player who will not play a game due to concussion issues for the next two years? Salary cap manipulation, at its’ best.

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And, I don’t mean that Vermette, Michalek, and Gordon, are not good free agents, they had them here in Arizona before without the team going anywhere, even with getting close to making the playoffs in 2013-14. You can’t continue to do the same old things, expecting better outcomes. THEY NEED TO SPEND SOME MONEY ! ! There I said it… I know it’s easy for me to say, it’s not my money. General Manager Don Maloney got so ingrained with being a spinster with a low, almost non-existent budget, that now that he has ownership in place – he almost doesn’t know how to act.

I know that a pretty qualified right-handed defenseman named Dougie Hamilton was available, and the team wanted to acquire him. For whatever reason, the draft day deal fell through. BUT, (and I know some of you are tired of hearing this) Cody Franson is STILL available to be signed, and yet the ownership group won’t spend the money to improve the team.

It would be so awesome to have Franson on the right side of Oliver Ekman-Larsson as the #1 defensive pairing. It puts Michalek with Gormley, and Grossmann with Stone/Murphy. Now that is a competitive blue-line ready to protect Mike Smith’s net at a much higher level than last season.

Here we are in late August with training camp a few weeks away, and the Arizona Coyotes still have $13.874 million of cap space. They CLAIM they want to move towards making the playoffs, that’s their goal, per their GM Don Maloney.

Right now, even with the debacle deal on Pronger’s salary pick up, and the Ribeiro fiasco, they STILL have the second highest cap space of all 30 NHL teams, with Buffalo showing $14.307M, ahead of them. Carolina has $13.468M, Winnipeg has #13.309M, and Nashville is at $12.489M.

The recent re-organization of IceArizona’s ownership group caused by Andrew Barroway’s sudden change of mind decreasing his ownership from the 51% he originally had, was interesting. He claimed, at the time there were “philosophical differences in the financial direction of the team.”

So, that could mean Barroway wanted to spend more to get a more competitive team on the ice, or that IceArizona did. I believe the former, since Barroway has money, and it was his “dream” to own a NHL team. It only took him six months to figure out that dream was a nightmare, for whatever reason.

If the current management and ownership thinks that their young prospects (Domi, Duclair, Strome) are going to take them on the expressway to a championship, they need to grab a reality check on the way out.

YOU NEED GOOD PLAYERS. YOU NEED TO SPEND MONEY TO GET THOSE PLAYERS. THE OLD SAYING “YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR” APPLIES HERE BIG TIME.

Next: Arizona Coyotes: IceArizona's Two Year Ownership Notes

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