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While the Coyotes are expected to officially announce the deal tomorrow, word has gotten out to the Arizona Republic that the team has resigned Right Wing Lee Stempniak to a two year deal. Per team policy, they haven't announced any other terms of the deal, but reports have the team paying 1.75 million per year. 

Stempniak was solid for the team after the Coyotes traded Matt Jones, a 4th round and a 7th round draft pick. He scored 14 goals and added 4 assists in only 18 regular season games. He dried up in the playoffs though with only 2 assists in the series against Detroit. 

This is a great deal from the Coyotes side as it gives them an experienced winger that has played well, at least here. at only 1.75 a year he fits the budget and doesn't have to relearn the style of play. One thing that could hurt is production is the absence of Matthew Lombardi as those tow played well together, but expect Stempniak to to line up with Vernon Fiddler instead who along with Taylor Pyatt also showed some chemistry last year. 

More photos » Christian Petersen - Getty Images

Shane Doan is excited for the season to start too...

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In an effort to get things back on track and preview the upcoming Season, FfH is breaking down each of the players on the Coyotes roster to get some idea of how this year might go. I'd like to say I'm committing to doing one everyday, but... Those promises always fall apart. I'll do my best though. 

In the first of Five for Howling's player previews we start at the top of the Coyotes roster with captain Shane Doan. Any fan of the team or of hockey knows what he brings to the table in terms of pure leadership and that was finally validated this summer at the NHL Awards when he received the King Clancy Award for leadership. Outside of Dave Tippett, I'd largely give credit for this past season's success to Doan as inside the room he's the one pushing the team to the next level and keeping their heads on straight. 

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More Twitter reporting that the Coyotes have traded defenseman James Vandermeer to the Oilers for Left Wing Patrick O'Sullivan. This looks to be mostly a cap move though as Vandermeer was likely to be bought out if he wasn't moved. O'Sullivan will likely suffer the same fate here as he has not played all that well for the Oilers. He's scheduled to make just under 3 million for this coming season, but a buyout of his last remaining year costs the team only $795,583 for this season. Don Maloney continues to find inventive ways to clear cap room to re-sign players and to pick up the Free Agents we'll likely need should those deals fall through.

Hey, remember this guy? Plucky young guy Viktor Tikhonov? You may (or may not) have been wondering where he went off to and if we'd ever be seeing him again. He didn't make the Phoenix Coyotes out of camp this year and was sent down to the AHL. However, in his contract he had a provision that allowed him to be loaned to the KHL if he wasn't going to be seeing significant time with the Coyotes. So Viktor headed off to the land of his father, and more notably his famous grandfather of the same name, to play for the Severstal Cherepovets.

With Severstal Tikhonov was getting respectable numbers and more importantly getting lots and lots of ice time against some pretty good players. His 17:21 per game is 4th on his team for forwards and would amount to being a 2nd line winger on a team just above the AHL in terms of the level of play. Even more impressive is while Cherepovets didn't make the playoffs by a long shot (they were pretty terrible) Tikhonov was a +11 in only 25 games played. While +/- isn't the end all be all of stats, when the next closest forward is a +3? That's kind of significant. Here's a look at his stats for the season with Severstal...

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When these Olympic games started, if you had said that the only Coyote that would make it to the semi-finals would be defenseman Sami Lepisto I would have laughed in your face. That is however the case as the Finns have surprisingly made it to play the United States later today. I'm not sure if the biggest surprise is that they made it this far or that neither the Czech team with Zbynek Michalek on the blueline, or the Russian team with Coyotes goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, made it to the Semis at all. Both were major contenders, but RUssia just wasn't a match for the Canadian tam they met in the Quarterfinals.

Back to Sami though... While I like the guy, I'm hoping that he gets the loss tonight. Even with a loss though Finland would get to a bronze medal game. Hopefully Sami and the Finns end up with at least something that he can wear around the locker room in front of Bryz and Z just to rub it in a little bit.He hasn't been getting in on the scoring much for the Finnish team though 0-0-0 so far, but he's getting second pairing minutes now. He also has 4 penalty minutes. Maybe not a dominant performance, but It doesn't matter if his team comes home with a medal.

Good luck Sami! (Just not tonight.)

Per Coyotes.com

Phoenix Coyotes General Manager Don Maloney announced today that Coyotes forward Scottie Upshall will be out of the lineup indefinitely after sustaining an injury to his right knee during the team’s game versus the Calgary Flames on Jan. 28. A follow-up evaluation and MRI by the Club’s medical staff confirmed a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). An ACL surgical procedure is expected to be scheduled.

While the Coyotes have been a score by committee kind of team, it's never a fun thing to have one of your top producers go down to an injury like this. Some Coyote fans are probably hopeful that this is still a shorter term thing, but when the Coyotes say Indefinite, this time they mean that they're hoping to have him back in time for training camp. ACL tears, when they require surgery, aren't a short term fix. According to WebMD and other medical sources they can take anywhere from four months to a year to rehab and get back to playing shape depending on the severity of the injury. It's terrible that we lost him to some fluke play where his skate got jammed in the boards.

So what are we going to do in the meantime? Mikkel Boedker is up from San Antonio and scored in his first game back, so that's an encouraging sign. We've really spread the scoring around so that helps in terms of not being reliant on the 18-14-32 in point production even though it's still painful to lose. I would imagine that this has got to make any talks the Coyotes are having about getting another scorer even more important and more hurried to get done. I still wouldn't know who we would package to get someone like Scottie, but now it's more likely than ever that we see a new face or two before the deadline.