Chychrun traded to Senators by Coyotes

Arizona received a conditional first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, a conditional second-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft and a second-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.”It’s it’s a great day for the franchise,” general manager Pierre Dorion said Thursday at Madison Square Garden in New York. “For us to add a player the caliber of Jakob Chychrun. I think that’s exciting. I think it’s exciting for our fans. It’s exciting for the players in that dressing room.”Chychrun is in the fourth season of a six-year contract he signed with the Coyotes on Nov. 13, 2018, and can become an unrestricted free agent after the 2024-25 season.Dorion said though the Senators (30-26-4) entered Thursday five points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs into the Eastern Conference, this trade was not just about this season.”For us, obviously bringing in a player for a playoff push is great, but this is not for this year,” Dorion said. “It’s for this year and the next two years. Solidifying our backend, it hasn’t been easy. I think it’s been on billboards everywhere in any hockey market that the Ottawa Senators were always looking for a top-four defenseman. So, this does it for this year, but it does it for the next two years. What we like about it is that he’s 24-years-old. You look at our core, we’ve got a fairly young core. And he fits in. He can grow with them.”RELATED: [2022-23 NHL Trade Tracker]The 24-year-old defenseman has 28 points (seven goals, 21 assists) in 36 games this season, last playing Feb. 10. Chychrun sat out eight games while waiting to be traded, which happened before Arizona’s 4-2 loss at the Dallas Stars on Wednesday. He did not make his season debut until Nov. 21 because of a wrist injury.”[The players] are excited,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “They get better, These guys have been through a lot, starting the rebuild right from the bottom and they continue to get better and this addition is going to help the group.Chychrun made his Senators debut at the New York Rangers on Thursday.Selected by Arizona in the first round (No. 16) of the 2016 NHL Draft, Chychrun has 170 points (60 goals, 110 assists) in 373 regular-season games and one goal in nine playoff games.”Jakob was a first-class act,” Coyotes GM Bill Armstrong said. “He had expressed interest to move on to a club that was a contender. We were trying to do that with a trade. We had immense respect for the player and his wishes. At the same time, I’ve said this before, we had to make sure it was the best for the club. … He gets a chance to go play in Ottawa and a chance to lead that team and help them get to the playoffs. It’ll be a great challenge and he’s going to be a great add for that team.”Armstrong said he’d spoken to other GMs about Chychrun for about a year.”It took us a while just to get the ask right and get into the market and understand it,” Armstrong said. “… Our aim was to acquire draft capital at this point. … This will give us a chance for two fairly high picks in the draft in the first round and you can really make some hay when you do that as an organization.”Also Wednesday, Arizona traded defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere to the Carolina Hurricanes for a third-round pick in the 2026 draft.The Coyotes (21-30-9) are 21 points behind the Seattle Kraken and Winnipeg Jets for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference.NHL.com staff writers Tracey Myers and Dan Rosen contributed to this report