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The long wait is over folks! After a long summer and some minor distractions with something about a court case (or something like that), the Coyotes 2009 Training Camp Begins Sunday!
There’s lots of questions that need to be answered before the training camp starts. A few off the top of my head are:
1) Will Wayne Gretzky show up to Camp?
Reports have been going around about Wayne Gretzky being out as coach now that the Ice Edge people have withdrawn their purchase bid for the Coyotes. The NHL and Jim Ballsille’s bids to purchase the Coyotes do not include Gretzky in their plans.
Doug Moss has said that Wayne Gretzky is still the coach until he hears otherwise.
I guess it’s all up to Gretzky now.
2) Will this roster be deep enough to negate the major weakness on the Coyotes last season when they finished 5th in the West at the All-Star Break last season?
The main problem with the Coyotes last season was that when a player went down with injury, the Coyotes lacked the organizational depth to fill in the gaps causing the ‘yotes to drop out of playoff contention. They pretty much had a bunch of kids filling in the gap and couldn’t be expected to carry the load.
Coyotes GM Don Maloney, on paper, seemed to have addressed this with the veteran signings this past off-season. However, it remains to be seen if this squad can develop the chemistry on the ice. We won’t know until the a quarter to third of the games into the season.
3) Will this team contend for a playoff spot or…dare I say…make the playoffs this season?
With all the teams in the west improving their rosters in the offseason (The Oilers, Canucks, and Kings most notably beefing up their rosters) will the Coyotes have enough depth and talent to push and possibly make the playoffs? On paper, I’d have to say yes. We’ll have to see if I’m correct about that. The indicators of how this team will work together will come around a quarter or a third of the way into the season.
4) Will the fans come to the games?
This is a big question mark for the team as some fans are pretty fed up with the same letdowns again and again with the Coyotes. It’s up to the team to win games this season. That’s the only way to put butts in seats.
Training Camp Starts Sunday and all On Ice Practices are open to the public (schedule below).
Here’s the schedule and the Coyotes Training Camp Roster for your viewing pleasure (Both files are in PDF format. Use the Adobe Acrobat reader to view):
