Craig Morgan: Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny to reporter Adam Vingan on Jakob Chychrun: “He will remain out of the lineup until something happens.”
Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast on the Arizona Coyotes, Jakob Chychrun, the Los Angeles Kings, and Brandt Clarke
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “What is the latest as we record this late Sunday evening with Jakob Chychrun and the Arizona Coyotes?
Friedman: “First of all, you bring up a good point. I have remembered times where I’ve gone to bed and woken up in the morning and said, ‘you know this happened over night, and you’re like Jesus bleeping whatever. Never sleep Jeff. That’s the lesson, never sleep.
Marek: “Sleep is for the weak Elliotte. Everything we’ve heard in the last 10 years is about how important sleep is. Sleep is for the weak everybody.”
Friedman: “It’s just a phase, get yourself through that phase.
Anyway, with the understanding that things can change at any time, Jakob Chychrun, the Arizona Coyotes and the LA Kings are like that slow budding romance from high school. You see someone you like. You’re interested. They’re interested. You both know you’re kind of interested in each other. There’s some slow flirting. One of the two people really has to go and say, ‘I’m going for this.’
Marek: ” So past the point of the little note in the locker at lunchtime. Past the whispers and the tell your friend that I think that he or she is cute. Like, we’re past that phase now?”
Friedman: “Yes, we’re past that phase. I think the LA Kings made it very clear not only to the Coyotes but other teams, that in anything we consider, we are not including Quinten Byfield and Brandt Clarke. I think they felt strongly about that and I had heard that they had let everybody know that internally and everyone who asked about it externally. No Byfield. No Clarke.
Despite that, the Clarke rumors went crazy on Sunday and I believe the Kings took the step of notifying Clarke that he would not be traded. And you’ll take in a second about Clarke’s weekend because you had some really intel. I think people should know it.
As it heated up on Saturday and Sunday, I think everybody was thinking LA was the team. And I think LA is in the driver’s seat but I kept getting warned, ‘It is not close. It is not close.’
I think I am afraid to say this because things can change at any time, I think at somewhere between the Kings and Coyotes, there was a snag. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen but I do think there was some kind of snag.
I think what the snag may have been, is that the Kings and the Coyotes were talking about a contract that needed to be moved, and they couldn’t agree. Like I don’t think it was a principal member of the trade, but I think it was potentially an ancillary member of the trade and the two sides couldn’t agree on it. I think that stalled the trade a little bit.
Again, does that mean it can’t happen? No. I don’t think it does mean that. I think it still could potentially happen, but I do think it gummed up the works for a little bit. And that’s I think where we are.
As we record this Sunday night after the Super Bowl, I don’t get the sense, again, famous last words, old takes exposed, that this is going to happen night.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be resuscitated. It may have been smart for the Coyotes to do this because they held Chychrun out of the game and because they tweeted what they did, I wonder if it’s re-engaged some other teams.
I think there are some other teams that are kind of like, “Okay, this is in the final stages here. Let’s see if we can get back in it.” And I think it is possible that’s happened, which only clouds all of this.
Again, I do believe the Kings and Coyotes were serious. I do believe there are serious conversations between them. I still think it’s possible. I don’t think it’s Clarke. I don’t think it’s Byfield, and I think one of the potential problems was a contract that needed to be moved and they couldn’t work it out.
That is my best guess at where we are on Sunday night.
Marek: “To extend your high school movie motif then, Rob Blake was playing the role of John Cusack in the boombox scene from ‘Say Anything,’ saying essentially, ‘It’s time to see if we can actually do this. I’m still interested over here.
You mentioned Brandt Clarke a couple seconds ago and after we finished 32 Thoughts on Saturday, and I was working from home. I got upstairs to watch the third period of the game and all of sudden it was text after text after text and the common denominator was, cause we had mentioned Toronto has denied it. Edmonton has denied it, it wasn’t going to be them, and the report that we had was the Los Angeles Kings are throwing cold water on it.
Now it was Dustin Brown night. So it was the statue. It was the jersey. It was Dustin Brown holding the Stanley Cup and I don’t think they wanted to distract from that or take away from that. So I think that was maybe part of all of this.
You and I went back and forth in text into the wee hours about trying to figure out, is Brandt Clarke involved in this. It got to the point where I’m wondering, considering how much you’re reading social media as a hockey player considering all the reports. says everyone jumped out to speculate that it it’s going to be Los Angeles, it’s going to be Brandt Clarke as a key piece going back.
I’m thinking to myself, you know, if I’m Brandt Clarke on the bus after a game, I’m reading all this on my phone, and I’m saying, ‘Am I going to the Arizona Coyotes?’
We tried to figure this one out, and I’m with you, I’ve been led to believe all season long, and again, nobody is really untouchable, but the two young players the Kings have, that they really have not a lot of desire to even engage in any trade conversations about, are Quinton Byfield and the aforementioned Brandt Clarke.
So, I was skeptical from the beginning. You and I both looked into it and checked around. A lot of people in the hockey industry and at various levels and various leagues, because everyone has a sort of vested interest in this or at least a curiosity in it, were sending me texts saying it’s going to be Brandt Clarke. It’s going to be Brandt Clarke. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if Brandt Clarke thinks it’s going to be Brandt Clarke,’ that’s going to Arizona here.
But, jeez, you and I were texting to the wee hours trying to sort this one out and quickly arrived at the idea that no Brandt Clarke wasn’t going to be a part of this. Although I’ll tell you what, I got a text from one agent on Sunday morning who said the same thing we were talking about on Saturday night, ‘what do you know about this deal? All I know is Brandt Clarke is involved’ to which I responded, ‘I really don’t think that’s happening.’
But I’m sure you had the same experience.”
Friedman: “Yes.
Marek: “Of people making that assumption or what’s the old line about a mistruth runs around the block before the truth gets out the front door. Like this thing spread like wildfire with Brandt Clarke. All through the industry.”
Friedman: “Honestly Jeff, the biggest challenge I have in moments like this where I’m trying to be on top of things, is disbelieving things I believe to be true. Things fly so fast. Things fly so quickly.
You have people who you really trust who are telling things, but someone said to me Sunday night at the Super Bowl party I was at, ‘why aren’t you tweeting more about this’ and I said ‘because things I’m hearing do not lineup with some of the information that’s out there.’ And the worst thing you can be is wrong. So sometimes I think it’s better to do it on the Pod like this and kind of explain the way I feel as opposed to do it out in social media.
But as we said at the beginning, that’s the best I can tell you. I think it was very serious between these two teams. I think they legitimately tried to get a deal done and I think something snagged the deal. You know what my theory is. A contract that has to be moved as part of this deal that they can’t get worked out. And we’ll see where this goes.
I do believe to that there other teams who re-engaged, and we will see where they go here. They play Monday night against Nashville, the Coyotes do. We’ll see if he is in the lineup.
The other thing I wanted to say about Saturday night, remember last year the Coyotes traded Ilya Lyubushkin to Toronto and it was a Saturday night and he was out. They didn’t make that kind of tweet, he just wasn’t in and I called someone a few minutes before we went on the air and for our 32 Thoughts segment on Hockey Night, someone said be on top of this. Lyubushkin’s going to Toronto. I think we said and it happened later that night.
It wasn’t phased this way. This time the Coyotes did it this way, which I think was smart. I’m never going to have a problem with a team doing that.
The other thing I wonder about this case is, I also wonder if it was a situation where maybe the trade wasn’t done, but they knew it was a possibility, and they weren’t going to risk it. Chychrun is a guy whose had a lot of injuries and I think it was sort of like, “We’re talking. We don’t know if this trade is necessarily is going to happen, but it could happen, so we are playing it safe.” So they weren’t lying, but it wasn’t necessarily right on the edge of happening.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
