NHL Draft: Worst 1st-round pick in franchise history: Arizona Coyotes, Dylan Strome 2015 NHL Draft
It’s really hard to argue that a player that’s literally just 24 years old is the biggest bust in the history of the franchise, but look at the 2015 NHL Draft, look where the Arizona Coyotes picked, and look what they got in return. The 2015 draft was STACKED. Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel went one and two. It’s not the Coyotes’ fault they were no longer available. However, out of every top-10 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, every player has played more games than Dylan Strome. In fact, every player has played at least 100 more games than Strome.
Strome isn’t even on the Coyotes anymore. He was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks along with Brendan Perlini for Nick Schmaltz. Schmaltz has been a wild disappointment since coming to Arizona, and there’s speculation he was in jeopardy in the Seattle Kraken expansion draft.
This is just a massive fail by then-GM John Chayka. His tenure in Arizona wasn’t great, but coming to the staff after they drafted Strome and then how he handled the situation moving forward might have been the most bungled move of his time in the desert.
Do we really need to go over every great player that was taken in 2015? It would need to be read in the style of “We Didn’t Start The Fire”. “Mat Barzal. Mitch Marner. Ivan Provorov, too. Zach Werenski. Mikko Rantanen. Even, Pavel Zacha. We didn’t draft Dylan Strome. He was overrated, and the Coyotes should have faded.”
Strome is now back in the rumor mill in Chicago, and he could go down as one of the biggest swings and misses in recent history. There was too much talent all over the 2015 NHL Draft to miss.