Rick Zombo and his Lindenwood University hockey staff have been leaning on Greg Powers for advice over the past couple of seasons. The Lions, who joined the NCAA Division I ranks this season, are walking the same path that the Sun Devils walked eight seasons ago when ASU made the leap from club team to Division I. Zombo has something...

Chronicling Jakob Chychrun is strange these days. The one player whom everyone assumed would be an immovable cornerstone of the Coyotes’ rebuild is now the focal point of the next sledgehammer stroke, with GM Bill Armstrong eyeing further renovation. Make no mistake: The Coyotes are still looking to trade Chychrun and Chychrun still wants to be traded. Nothing has changed on that front, but everything is stuck in this weird holding pattern as other teams ogle the merchandise to assess its strengths, its weaknesses, its potential and its price. We’re somewhere on the dead man walking continuum. The attention wasn’t there for Chychrun’s first few games after he returned from a wrist injury because he was still getting his legs…

Early in the Coyotes’ bid to build an arena and entertainment district along the south bank of the Salt River, there was a strong possibility that the Tempe City Council would reject the team’s proposal. “One hundred percent true,” council member Randy Keating said Tuesday. “Even before deciding to enter negotiations with the Coyotes, there was a lot of mixed emotions in the city over it. There was never a period where I thought this project was going to be a 7-0 all the way up until we took the votes tonight.” In January, the Coyotes were two votes short of support in council. By June, they had five votes in favor of moving forward with negotiations. By the time…

Arizona hockey fans had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the future when prospect Josh Doan and prospect Logan Cooley squared off in a two-game series between Arizona State and Minnesota this past weekend at Mullett Arena. Fans can also watch prospects live in the CHL, USHL or NCAA on readily available streaming options. If fans want to watch European...

The design of the play was simple. The reward for proper execution was massive. About halfway through 3-on-3 overtime against the No. 2 Minnesota Golden Gophers on Saturday at Mullett Arena, ASU coach Greg Powers called a timeout. He wanted Josh Doan to take the faceoff, but he wanted his sophomore captain to do more than just win that draw. “Center wins it forward and when he does, the winger goes,” Powers explained. “Center sends it, breakaway.” Doan won the draw to the weak side and Robert Mastrosimone went, getting in alone to score the game-winner and give ASU a 6-5 win that it needed in the worst way. https://twitter.com/shawn_depaz/status/1596728499553075201 “Another benchmark win for us,” said Powers, who apologized for…

It’s rare to see a Coyotes draft pick play in Arizona in the same season in which he was drafted.  Jakob Chychrun made the NHL roster in his draft year of 2016 and Clayton Keller played three games for the Coyotes late that same season; games in which former coach Dave Tippett humorously noted that he looked like a child on the ice.  Mikkel Boedker and Viktor Tikhonov made the NHL roster in their draft year of 2008, Kyle Turris did it in 2007, and JJ Moser did it last season.That’s it. Until the past two years.  Sort of. Which is another way of saying just how much hockey has grown in Arizona since the Coyotes’ arrival in 1996. It…

When PHNX Sports began highlighting dogs for adoption and fostering last year at Maricopa County Animal Care & Control’s east shelter in Mesa, I steeled myself for the depressing conditions at that overcrowded, underfunded, understaffed and badly outdated facility. When I stepped inside Heidi’s Village for the first time this summer, I had a “Wizard of Oz” revelation. You’re not in county anymore. Instead of rows of tiny kennels housed by psychologically deteriorating dogs who hadn’t been walked or talked to for days, I entered a bright and open campus with eight separate buildings for dogs and cats, play areas outside each of those buildings, a splash pad, an on-site veterinary clinic, an on-site groomer, training rooms and evidence of…

Coyotes fans have come to expect alternate ledes from me in these mailbags. Today’s topic is covers of songs that equaled or surpassed the original. What led me down this path? The discovery that perhaps my favorite Amy Winehouse song is a cover, not an original. More on that in a second. Anybody who knows anything about music knows that...

Up until about a week ago, you could not find odds for Matias Maccelli winning the Calder Trophy on the DraftKings Sportsbook App. This in spite of the fact that at that time, Maccelli was leading all NHL rookies in points. Before the Sunday slate of NHL games began, Maccelli was second in rookie points (10) to Seattle’s Matty Beniers (11) and first in points per game (.63) among rookies with at least five games played, yet he still wasn’t getting much love from Vegas in the race for rookie of the year. Eleven players had better odds. Odds via DraftKings “His whole career, he has had to prove people wrong,” said Dubuque Fighting Saints GM Kalle Larsson, who had…