Coyotes Quarter Century Team reaction: Doan, young talent carried franchise through roller-coaster history

On Wednesday, the Arizona Coyotes unveiled their Quarter-Century teams, naming their best players since 2000, voted on by broadcasters and former players.

As each team releases its Quarter-Century squad, we’ll provide analysis on Daily Faceoff as to what the voters got right and wrong. Today, we discuss a team that is now known as the Utah Hockey Club.

THE TEAM

First Team

FORWARDS

Shane Doan
Clayton Keller
Radim Vrbata

DEFENSEMEN

Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Keith Yandle

GOALIE

Mike Smith

Second Team

FORWARDS

Martin Hanzal
Jeremy Roenick
Nick Schmaltz

DEFENSEMEN

Zbynek Michalek
Teppo Numminen

GOALIE

Ilya Brzygalov

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

If this team didn’t have Shane Doan, I think even the new fans in Salt Lake City would feel like something is wrong. Doan was Mr. Coyote and the last player from the original incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets to have played in the NHL. He stuck with that franchise and the market when most players probably would’ve gone off and gone to a better team. The fact that he was rewarded with a run to the Western Conference Final in 2012 proved that even the hockey gods show a little pity.

The goaltenders were easy picks, since that position was a revolving door for many years outside of Ilya Brzygalov and Mike Smith. No two guys were able to give the Coyotes a chance to win like they did. Smith was a money goaltender during the 2012 postseason, while Brzygalov’s efforts helped put the Yotes back on the map in the early 2010s.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG

I understand why they put Jeremy Roenick on this list. He’s a Hall of Famer. However, his time with the Coyotes in this century was limited, as he signed with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2001. His “prime” years in Phoenix came in the ’90s when the team was still finding its footing after coming down from Canada, not necessarily an impact player in the past quarter-century.

Also, I know Radim Vrbata had more points as a Coyote than Nick Schmaltz, and maybe it’s recency bias, but Schmaltz was a fantastic player for the team when there was an immense amount of off-ice drama. Sure, both players hit the 50-point three times during their tenure with the team, but at least Schmaltz didn’t leave the franchise like Vrbata did (twice).

BIGGEST SNUB

Pavel Datsyuk!

Oh, I guess they had to play a game for the franchise…

Jakob Chychrun was more of an impactful player than many might think and was one of the players that helped Arizona climb out of the cellar of the Pacific Division and contend for the postseason. He was clearly good enough that when it was time for him to be on the move, he was protected by being held out of the lineup, and the phrase “trade-related reasons” became part of our vocabulary. Had injuries not hindered Chychrun over his tenure with the team, he might’ve been a shoo-in for the Second Team, at least.

One could argue that Ladislav Nagy could’ve snuck onto the second team. Unfortunately, his prime years in the NHL came while playing with some pretty rough Coyotes teams. The Slovakian posted back-to-back strong seasons in the final years of the dead-puck era, scoring 24 goals on a squad that won just 22 games during the 2003-04 season. However, since he isn’t in the Hall of Fame, Nagy didn’t get the recognition he probably would have with a better team.

VERDICT

The hardest part in picking a team like this is that there were so many players who came and left the franchise since the turn of the century. That said, I don’t have that much of a problem with this list, especially between the pipes. However, the fact they had Jeremy Roenick in there, simply because of what he did in the decade before the new millennium, kind of irks me.