The year-and-a-half long saga that has circled the Arizona Coyotes with regards to defenceman Jakob Chychrun has finally come to a surprising end.
On Wednesday evening, the Coyotes and Ottawa Senators teamed up for a four-piece trade that saw Chychrun go to the nation’s capital in exchange for three draft picks.
Yes, just three draft picks – a price far less than Arizona management had hoped to receive in exchange for the stud defenceman.
All the hype surrounding the 24-year-old somehow led to a poor return, despite Chychrun’s team-friendly contract and agile playing style.
In all, Ottawa paid the Coyotes a first round pick (2023) and two second round selections (2024, 2026) for his services.
In this his seventh season with Arizona, Chychryn has scored seven times and added another 21 assists for 28 points in just 36 games this year. He has been held out of the lineup of the past couple weeks by management, in hopes of avoiding any injury which would minimize the team’s haul.
Two of the three draft picks involved have conditions attached to them:
The 2023 first-round pick is top-five protected and will become an unprotected pick in 2024. Should the Senators reach the 2023 Eastern Conference Final, the second-round pick becomes a 2024 first-round pick that is top-10 protected. Should that condition be met, then it becomes an unprotected first round in 2025.
One team reportedly in on the Chychryn sweepstakes from the beginning was the Winnipeg Jets.
In need of some bulking up prior to the postseason, Winnipeg added forward Nino Niederreiter, but an area to which the team really needs help is on the back-end. Chychryn would have been a solid add. Despite missing out on the young blueliner, GM Kevin Cheveldayoff can still scour the market for available defenders.
A few that come to mind would be Travis Sanheim and Ivan Provorov of the Philadelphia Flyers – both who have ties to the province of Manitoba, while Brandon-born Joel Edmundson of the Montreal Canadiens would also provide some quality shut-down minutes on the back-end. St. Louis’ Colton Parayko also knows the Central Division well from his time with the Blues, but he does own a very rich contract.
With the NHL’s trade deadline just over a day away, the clock is ticking for Chevy and Co.
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