There isn’t much to normally link an Eastern Conference team to a Western Conference club. Perhaps a player or two that used to play on the team, or perhaps a sibling in another city that plays for the opposing squad. Well, when it comes to the relationship between the Coyotes and the Senators, there is a whole lot of both.
Two players on the Senators have a brother playing for Arizona. Two forwards who should be mainstays on the Sens this season will have dinner dates when they host to and visit the desert dogs. And when it comes to on-ice battles, you might expect more than a couple of head to head battles when Milan Michalek forechecks his brother Zbynek Michalek and when Mark Stone skates circles around his brother Michael Stone.
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While the Stone brothers have never gone head to head in an NHL game in their young careers, the Michaleks are old had at facing each other. They have played in the same conference before, when Milan was a Shark and Zbynek was in Phoenix and then again when Milan came to Ottawa and Zbynek went to Pittsburgh for a stint before returning to the Phoenix area.
That isn’t all, when it comes to the relationship between players on the Senators and the Coyotes. Kyle Turris, the Senators number one center was drafted by the Coyotes 3rd overall in 2007, but he didn’t really reach his potential in the desert and was traded to Ottawa in what turned out to be a very 1-sided deal.
A pair of former Senators also dot the Coyotes roster. Antoine Vermette will be entering his 3rd full season with the Coyotes after spending parts of 5 seasons in Ottawa and then parts of 4 in Columbus with the Blue Jackets. Rob Klinkhammer had a cup of coffee with the Senators and bounced to Phoenix. He played his first full NHL season in 2013-14, and should be a mainstay on the roster again this year.
So when the Coyotes and Sens meet up, there will be no shortage of storylines.