Daily Faceoff Live: Jakob Chychrun’s return could shake up the trade market

Daily Faceoff NHL insider Frank Seravalli released his first Trade Targets board of the 2022–23 season on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after Arizona Coyotes defenseman Jakob Chychrun played his first game in more than eight months.

Chychrun, 24, wants out of Arizona. The 6’2″, 220-lb left-handed defender scored 21 points in 47 games last year and logged more than 23 minutes in his season debut, a thrilling 4–3 shootout loss for the Coyotes in Nashville.

Although he struggled to stay healthy last year (and his injury recovery carried over into the start of this season), Chychrun is not far removed from a terrific 2020–21 campaign in which he played in all 56 of the Coyotes’ games and scored 18 goals and 41 points.

Seravalli and Mike McKenna discussed the ramifications of Chychrun’s return during Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: Let’s talk about Jakob Chychrun, who made his season debut on Monday night for the Arizona Coyotes. It was his first game since March 12 after undergoing both ankle and wrist surgeries for Chychrun. Mike, you got eyes on all of Chychrun’s shifts last night as he made his season debut. What did you make of him, and, my big question for anyone that might be interested in trading for Chychrun as this saga has dragged on for more than a calendar year, him now wanting out of Arizona, is, how good is Chychrun, what type of player would a team be getting?

Mike McKenna: Well, the first shift last night, Frank, within like 10 seconds, Chychrun made a bad pinch and I went, “whoa!”, because the play went right back towards the Arizona net. Well, guess what, though, he gets the puck and ends up skating it to the other end and gets a great chance right off the bat. Now, with Chychrun’s game, especially in your first time back, you want to see, how does this player respond physically. Well, he did. He was active with hits, with moving his feet. The physical limitations didn’t look there. So, the evaluation of his actual play, Frank, I thought he was a little bit scattered with the puck at times but I thought it progressed as the game went on. He was on the ice for a goal against but I thought, as it went, Chychrun’s offensive side was there. He played a lot on the power play. […]

Last year was tough for him. When you look at it previous to that, Frank, this was a guy who I think was in the mix for the Canadian Olympic team, if we would’ve had the Olympics. I don’t know if the jury’s out on what you’re going to get, the pieces are still there. I still see the active, mobile Jakob Chychrun that we’ve seen before, but I need to see more from the offensive side to see if he gets back his mojo.

Watch the full episode here: