This offseason for the desert dogs has certainly been an active one. Usually we’re shedding names for draft capital or taking on bad contracts for said capital but this year, the Coyotes are buying and I’m loving what they’ve bought. Around draft time, Elliot Friedman tweeted that he expected the Coyotes to “buy” this offseason and be more competitive.
With my previous article, I mentioned the Zucker and Kerfoot buys as well as the Cooley signing. The Coyotes have now added veteran Matt Dumba on a 1 year, 4 mill (3.9 AAV) contract putting the offensive-defenseman in the Kachina sweater.
My personal opinion on these moves is that we’re starting to get to the fun part of the rebuild, no longer trying to lose games. Will we take the division? No, but we’ll be similar to the first-half Dbacks in that we’ll lose some close games but it’ll be fun as hell to watch. Adding Dumba is essentially a Shayne Gostisbehere with a better shot which will definitely add to our offensive fire power.
This next part of my article will be why it got delayed:
This week, the Coyotes have announced a Letter of Intent to buy 41 acres of land in Mesa (the east side of the Phoenix Metro area for the out of staters reading).
The east valley is where a majority of the season ticket holding and corporate partners reside and with the abundance of freeways, a much easier place to access on a week day gamed than Glendale.
One of the proposed locations is the currently being demolished Fiesta Mall, a favorite spot of mine personally, these letters of intent are not legally binding and not a guarantee they buy these sites.
I think this is a huge marketing move (in a positive way) and shows the Coyotes commitment wasn’t just words. We will see many LOI’s coming so get ready fans it’s going to get interesting and will be fun speculating on ideas.
The Chirpin Yotes Podcast will definitely be speaking on these topics so keep an eye out for that and I will update in another round up when the time comes.
