Call Gary Bettman The Roadrunner Because He Just Dummied The Coyotes With Sanctions
So you may remember ago that the 'Yotes were caught cheating by having their scouts hold some non-sanctioned testings done on multiple draft eligible players in the CHL. Basically they'd show up to random games and have draft prospects tested immediately after, or something along those lines. Either way, they were testing prospects before they were allowed to be and you just can't do that.
So a couple months ago, Arizona Coyotes' new owner Alex Merulo came out and said that the penalties that would come down from the NHL for this "won't be substantial". He said that they were cooperative with the league and that he didn't think anything major would come out of it. Now granted, there was a possibility that the Coyotes would have to pay a $250,000 fine for each player who was illegally tested. I'm pretty sure with the amount of players involved here, they would have racked up at least a few mill in fines. So the final punishment here definitely isn't nearly as substantial as it could have been financially.
But now the 'Yotes have to forfeit their 2nd round pick in this upcoming draft, as well as their 1st round pick in 2021. Which is already a lot as is, but that pretty much guarantees that Taylor Hall won't be re-signing with Arizona this offseason as a UFA. Not only because he's made it abundantly clear that he wants to go somewhere to win the Cup. But also because if he doesn't win the Cup, well there's no chance that Arizona can get the 1st overall pick in 2021 since they've already forfeited their pick in that year. So that's a massive double whammy for the Coyotes.
Also--you have to start wondering about how long this has been going on for. You look at their drafting history over the last 10 years or so. They've drafted some solid players in guys like Domi, Perlini and Strome. But none of them are necessarily franchise altering players. All 3 of them have already been traded from Arizona. But then in the past few years, you've got Clayton Keller and Jakob Chychrun and Barrett Hayton. All of them have the making of being a strong core for this franchise for years to come. I wonder when those guys first started talking to Arizona. Maybe their first year of PeeWee's? Wouldn't be surprised. Those dirty desert dogs.