Arizona Coyotes Are A Changed Team Without Kyle Chipchura

Kyle Chipchura has signed a new contract with a KHL team in Europe. Chip becomes one of the last puzzle pieces to leave from the Arizona Coyotes’ 2012 playoff team as the organization shifts towards speed over grit.

When the Arizona Coyotes, then Phoenix Coyotes, won the Pacific Division in 2012, hockey fans in the desert thought the team was going to finally break out of mediocrity.

But in the following offseason, the team began to change. 

Ray Whitney and Adrian Aucoin departed in free agency. Two years later, Derek Morris and Rusty Klesla were let go.

Not long after that, Radim Vrbata, Keith Yandle and Paul Bissonnette all left the team.

In fact, the team that almost led the Coyotes to a Stanley Cup Finals berth one year had nearly been deconstructed over the next four, leaving just nine players from that 2012 team on the roster for the 2015-16 season.

Moreover, last season had some more dominoes fall from that team, with Mikkel Boedker being dealt to Colorado and Boyd Gordon fielding a new deal with the Flyers early into free agency. 

On top of those departures, Martin Hanzal has been linked lot of trade rumors this offseason and Antoine Vermette‘s production downturn will likely spell a run at free agency next offseason.

Shane Doan, sitting at almost 40 now, is playing each season by ear.

The old core of grit and grinding is gone or will be soon. Chipchura was one of the last pieces to fall while Hanzal, Vermette and Doan’s time with the team is likely dwindling.

But Chipchura’s departure signals something far bigger in the Arizona Coyotes’ organization.

Change.

Change is the key.

It brought on big things like the hiring of John Chayka and change is in small things like the new jerseys.

Change will led to the current leaders in the locker room giving way to young guns in quantity of ice time and that same change is fans accepting that not all good things last forever (think Shane Doan).

Kyle Chipchura is the poster child of a style the Arizona Coyotes are moving away from.

He was a grinder at heart, fighting in the first period, boarding someone during the second and grinding out a goal in the third. Chippy was the embodiment of that 2012 team.

They were gritty, strong and lucky, just like him.

But Arizona isn’t about hitting hard and being lucky anymore. John Chayka is about skills, speed, and scoring.

The era of that wildly successful 2012 roster is over, and so is the era of Kyle Chipchura.

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As fans, we have to accept this change and realize that for this action, an equal reaction will happen this season in the form of 20-30 more points from whomever makes the roster this season.

Chipchura moving in frees up space for faces like Christian Dvorak or Dylan Strome, and that change could be the difference that pushes Arizona back into the payoffs.