Well, how’s this for a buzzkill, Coyotes fans? Your favorite desert-dwelling hockey team just hit a cactus-sized snag. Troy “The Stecher Stretch” Stecher is on the shelf for a month and change, all thanks to a pesky lower-body boo-boo. Yup, the man’s been in forty-two showdowns outta forty-four, so you could say he’s a constant in an otherwise chaotic Coyote universe.
Now, this dude’s racked up a modest five points, spent twenty minutes in the sin bin, and boasts a +7 rating. And that, my friends, is what we, in the hockey world, call a ‘solid player’. He’s no stranger to the Coyote cacophony, serving his second term after a brief vacation with the Calgary Flames – talk about loyalty, eh? On July 1, he pledged allegiance once more to Arizona for a cool one-point-one mill for the season.
Let’s stroll down memory lane, shall we? Troy wasn’t drafted – shocker! – but he clawed his way into the big leagues like a true underdog, debuting with the AHL’s Utica Comets and notching a whopping four games in the 2016-17 season. Now he’s gallivanting in the NHL with 482 games and 108 points under his belt. Not too shabby for our man Stecher.
So, now what? Arizona’s bench is lookin’ thinner than a tumbleweed in a twister. Poor Barrett Hayton, Travis Boyd, and Vladislav Kolyachonok are already licking their wounds. And who’s stepping up to fill those skates? Juuso “Seventh Wheel” Valimaki and the dynamic duo of Josh Brown and Michael Kesselring. You know them, the boys who usually bring up the rear in game night outings.
Gear up for some good ol’ fashioned makeshift lineups and a whole lot of grit, ’cause that’s how the Coyotes are gonna weather this storm. Smells like opportunity – or maybe that’s just the leftover nachos. Either way, it’s showtime in the desert!