Should The Arizona Coyotes Look At Devan Dubnyk?

The Arizona Coyotes aren’t as bad as expected. In fact, they’re much worse. After watching the 8-2 shellacking they suffered at the hands of the St. Louis Blues last weekend, at home nonetheless, you start to ask yourself “will we see this team go 0-82?”

That’s obviously an exaggeration. With the way the NHL is built, there’s no chance they’re that bad, although they might have a record close to the Washington Capitals inaugural 1974-1975 season. That’s not a record you want to be close to. Most likely they’ll end up with a record reminiscent of the pre Sidney Crosby days with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Remember when they would be lucky to win 22 games a year?

While Arizona is bad at all areas, the biggest problem by far in the early season has been their goaltending. After the game against St. Louis, number one goalie Carter Hutton has an 8.75 goals against average and a .702 save percentage in his two starts this season. Yes, the season is early, but there’s no way those numbers aren’t alarming. That’s not the worst of it. Hutton has the worst goals saved above expected in the NHL at -10.

Arizona is clearly not trying to win this season. They’re in a rebuild on a rebuild and getting draft picks following their combine scandal is their main concern. We don’t want to overreact and say they have the potential to be historically bad, but they should at least try to win a few games. To reach that 22 game win level we joked about before, goaltending needs an upgrade. So what are their options?

It’s going to be a long season for the still winless Arizona Coyotes. Will binging in still free agent Devan Dubnyk help them finally win a few games?

In five games of action their backup Karel Vejmelka put up a respectable 3.15 goals against average and 0.899 save percentage. Three of those five games were starts along with two relief appearances. Those numbers obviously would go up if the 25-year-old took over starting duties.

Another option is to turn to the free agency market. The lion’s share of free agent goalies have found home by now, but one surprising name that hasn’t is Devan Dubnyk. His former team the Edmonton Oilers were reported to have interest, but he still remains unsigned. Dubnyk hasn’t won more than 30 games in a season since 2018-2019, but he did play in 22 games in last year’s shortened season between the San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche. Maybe the 35-year-old has enough left in the tank to put in a winning effort here and there just to save the Coyotes from a record bad NHL outing?

Every trade deadline backup goaltenders are always in demand. If Dubnyk proves better than expected, the Coyotes can ship him out for another precious draft pick. If he’s worse than expected there still might be a team interested. If the Coyotes walk away from the Devan Dubnyk with a few enough wins to sell tickets and an extra draft pick it will all be worth it.

The Coyotes are bad, but their goaltending is much worse. The fans in the desert are in for a long season. No matter how much you want to see a “tank” to help rebuild (it doesn’t always work, just ask the Buffalo Sabres), real fans do want to see a win every now and then. Signing Devan Dubnyk to a cheap one-year deal might be Arizona’s best chance at doing that.