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The Mike Ribeiro Experiment: Looking Back At 2013-2014

By William Grigsby

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On July 5, 2013 the Coyotes signed free agent, Mike Ribeiro to a 4 year, $22 million contract.

Having Mike Ribeiro seemed like a good plan — but it didn’t turn out quite the way the Arizona Coyotes management had planned.

The former eighty-point scorer had a less than spectacular season in Arizona, scoring 16 goals and 31 assists en route to an abysmal 49 points in 80 games.

The team had hoped his playmaking skills and previous relationship with Coach Dave Tippett — dating back to when Tippett coached the Dallas Stars — would be instrumental in the team’s success. That didn’t quite happen —

According to Coyotes General Manager Don Maloney:

"“Mike had some behavioral issues last year and after looking at everything that occurred I just felt there were certain levels of behavior that we could not accept,” general manager Don Maloney said Friday by phone from the NHL Draft in Philadelphia. “This has nothing to do with finances. Our goal is to become a successful, winning franchise. For us to move forward, we felt we had to make this change.”"

When the smoke cleared, the team was poised to lose $1.94M annually over each of the next six seasons, good to cover Mike Ribeiro’s buyout.

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    • The team tried to lessen the blow, reasoning that the franchise would save $3.5M over three years.

    That may be true — but they may have also lost the talent that Ribeiro is displaying this season, lighting it up on a one year, $1.03M contract to play for the Nashville Predators. His success there has been suggestive that he’s a player who had a problem and took care of it to save his career — he’s on pace to score 70+ points this season with Nashville, and some fans (myself included) are wondering if management should have been more patient with Ribeiro.

    With the grueling traveling that NHL players endure, it’s no wonder more players don’t experience personal problems affecting their play. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone what Ribeiro reportedly did… rumors ranged from missing buses and practices to being a disruptive distraction in the club house and getting into a yelling match with Coach Tippett in Colorado — I just wish some other outcome could have been brought about, especially when you think about a best-case scenario.

    Moving on to the results of the ’13-’14 season:

    The team finished 4th in the Pacific Division, ending the 82-game season just two points shy of making the playoffs behind the Dallas Stars.

    They wound up with 89 points, walking away from the season with a record of: 37 W, 30 L, 15 OL. They were 19th in goals scored, and given up, so that could explain why they finished out of the playoffs for the second straight season.

    Individual statistics:

    –Keith Yandle led the team once again in scoring, finishing the season with 8 goals and 45 assists.

    -Yandle finished 4 points ahead of Radim Vrbata, who was good for 51 points.

    –Mikkel Boedker came into his own this season, tallying 19 goals and 32 assists in third place.

    –Shane Doan and Radim Vrbata shared the team lead in power play goals with 10 each, while Oliver Ekman-Larsson started to show his offensive muscles with 8 PPG and led the pack in game winning goals. Ekman-Larsson has already managed to meet these statistics over just 45 games this current season.

    There were

    several

    four reasons the ’13-’14 Coyotes failed to make the playoffs:

    1. They managed only 2 points from shootouts in their final 8 games — and the season saw a 7 game losing streak.
    2. The injury to Mike Smith against the New York Rangers on 3-24-14 forced Thomas Greiss to take over between the pipes; without a sustainable starter, things went south.
    3. The team went 0-4-3 in the final 7 games, losing 4 of those 7 games by one goal. Close games, but games you’ve got to win at crunch time.
    4. Shane Doan’s illness (rocky mountain fever virus caused by a tick) caused him to miss 12 games — and the team went 4-3-5 without him in the lineup.

    With new ownership, the team still only managed to attract an average of 12,913 fans a game (75.4 % of capacity), 28th in the NHL.

    Besides signing Mike Ribeiro to a large contract, the team also bit the bullet and signed goalie Mike Smith to a six year $34M contract.

    Lauri Korpikoski signed a $10M contract, good for four years.

    Thus far this season, Ribeiro and Smith’s contracts are both looking far from sound business decisions. Mike Smith is struggling to move from the basement with his less than six million dollar performance so far, and we’ve been over the Ribeiro issue.

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