Arizona Coyotes Draft Cam Dineen 68th Overall
The Arizona Coyotes continued to bolster their defensive prospect pool by selecting North Bay Battalion defenseman Cam Dineen in the third round.
At the trade deadline of the 2015-16 season, the Arizona Coyotes acquired Alex Tanguay, Conner Bleackley, and Kyle Wood in exchange for Mikkel Boedker.
The main targets of the trade were Wood and the compensatory 2nd round pick the Coyotes would receive by allowing Bleackley to re-enter the 2016 draft.
After trading the compensatory pick for Lightning defenseman Anthony DeAngelo, it may or may not have been a coincidence that General Manager John Chayka used his 68th overall pick on defender Cam Dineen.
Dineen just happens to be Kyle Wood’s partner on the blue-line for the OHL’s North Bay Battalion. That partnership just got even more interesting.
It would seem unlikely that in some not too far off future we see both Kyle Wood and Cam Dineen lining up on either side of the blue-line in for the Roadrunners or here in Glendale, but the youngster was plenty productive in his first season in the Ontario Hockey League.
Cam Dineen scored 13 goals and 46 assists to total 59 points in his rookie season in the Ontario Hockey League. That placed him second among all rookie skaters behind highly touted Alexander Nylander.
That’s fairly impressive, and Dineen was rated the #39th overall skater in North America by NHL Central Scouting.
The North Bay prospect comes in at 5’11 and 185 pounds, so he’s not quite got the size that most NHL general managers covet and perhaps that hurt his draft stock.
John Chayka and the new Arizona Coyotes brain trust didn’t approach this draft like most general managers, however, and it appears Chayka is putting a heavy emphasis on the ability to skate and move the puck.
Dineen is quite capable of fulfilling both of those objectives.
As a left-handed defenseman, Dineen will be one of the “next up” looking to fill in for the Arizona Coyotes behind Alex Goligoski as the veteran’s five-year deal comes to an end a few years down the road.
His coach, Stan Butler, is pretty big on Dineen’s potential and adaptability to the modern game as well.
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“He’s been huge for us. We’ve tried to adapt to the game as much as anyone else. The game now is about puck moving defencemen and skill. And that’s what Cameron [Dineen] is. I mean he’s second in defenseman scoring behind a 19 year old [Rasmus Andersson], as a first year player in the league, on a team that’s not the most offensively gifted.”