A Team For All Seasons? - Phoenix Coyotes

Hockey Digest, Feb, 2001 by Bob Mcmanaman

After another successful fall for Jeremy Roenick and the Phoenix Coyotes, can this team finally have a solid winter, spring, and summer?

ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN ARIZONA. The sun is shining brightly, there is nary a cloud in the sky, and the sparse crowd that gathers along the glass to eyeball the hockey players ,at practice are wearing shorts and sandals.

It's November, so you know life is good for the Phoenix Coyotes.

Jeremy Roenick, with a wink, flips a puck over the boards for a little girl Shane Doan terrifies a couple of young boys by playfully slamming his stick across the glass right in front of their noses. There are smiles and hoots and high lives.

And why not? The Coyotes, as they have each of the past three seasons, have roared out to another electrifying ,;tart. They were off to a franchise-record run by going 9-14, including a league-leading 11-game unbeaten streak (7-0-4)--just three games shy of another club mark.

Oh yeah, and some guy named Wayne Gretzky was about to take over as a part owner and the managing general partner.

"Doesn't get much better than this, eh?" right wing Landon Wilson asks.

No, it doesn't. Too bad the NHL doesn't hand out the Stanley Cup in the fall, or the Coyotes would have three-peated by now. From 19918-99 through this season, the Coyotes combined regular-season record after the first 14 games of each season is an astounding 27.6-9. That's a 82% winning percentage.

But you don't win Lord Stanley's tin can in autumn. Octoberfest in Phoenix is always a party. The Coyotes can have their Novembers to remember, too. But it's April, May, and June that matter. And that's still a long, long way away.

When someone reminds captain Keith Tkachuk of that, the Coyotes' power forward grimaces. The smile, the same one that had virtually lit up the team's Scottsdale-based training facility just a few moments earlier, vanished quicker than a cold six-pack at a frat party. "Yeah, I know," Tkachuk says. "What are you trying to say?"

Well, it's great to feel all warm and fuzzy right now. But it's early. What about the playoffs? What about the fact you guys haven't advanced out of the first round of the playoffs since 1987? What about 13 straight years of postseason futility and 10 consecutive playoffs series losses?

If they don't advance in the playoffs this season, the Coyotes will own the longest streak of early exits in NHL history.

"I'm trying not to think about that," Tkachuk rays, fidgeting with his gear and staring at the floor as television cameras cloud in upon him. "If you get too far ahead of yourself, you get into a little bit of trouble.

"You've just got to concentrate on trying to improve each game. We're not even thinking about the playoffs right now."

And maybe that's a good thing. Besides, there's been more than enough to think about during the first two months of the season.

For starters, there is the incredible play of goal-tender Scan Burke, the 33-year-old veteran whom the Coyotes brought back at the last minute to once again replace the still-unsigned Nikolai Khabibulin. "I don't think there's a better goalie in the NHL right now than Burke," Coyotes coach Bobby Francis said in early November.

Burke stretched his record to 7-1-3 and was leading the league in virtually every major statistical category when he was honored as NHL Player of the Month for October. The capper came when he made 46 saves to shut out Patrick Roy and the Colorado Avalanche. It was the third-most saves by a goalie in a shutout performance since 1990-91.

"Sean was just awesome in that game," says Roenick. "You ask him and he'll probably tell you he didn't face that many quality chances. But the ones he did face, he made look way too easy. He made some incredible point-blank saves, but it seems like it's just part of the job to him."

The concern in Phoenix was how long he'd keep that job. It's been speculated ever since he signed a new, one-year deal for 81.3 million (about a 100% pay cut from last year) that Burke is just keeping the crease warm for Khabibulin. The rumors are Burke will be dealt.

After all the AWOL Russian was the NHL's fifth-winningest goalie from 1995-96 to 1998-99, with 118 victories. And Gretzky, who along with Phoenix developer Steve Ellman, was on the verge of taking over the team from owner Richard Burke, is on record as saying Khabibulin will be his No. 1 goalie.

"I think the Coyotes biggest problem last year was that they didn't have Khabibulin there all season," Gretzky said prior to training camp. "That's something we're not going to let happen again. Hopefully, we'll get him signed as soon as the sale is completed."

That's been a story in itself. Gretzky and Ellman hoped to close on their $87-million purchase of the club by the start of the season. But that date came and went. So did their next target date, and the one after that, and the one after that.

"I don't know if we anticipated this, but we knew it could take longer than we hoped." Gretzky says. "These things don't happen overnight, but it's going to get done. I just want to get it put to bed."