When you look at the potential 2008-09 roster for the Phoenix Coyotes, there aren’t many teams that have young talent at forward like the Coyotes do.  In many ways you can almost see how Wayne Gretzky envisioned his team and you can tell that he started mapping that blueprint a few years ago.  I’ll even go on record saying that Gretzky is trying to build his team much like his Oilers teams from the 80’s.  Now I’m not saying the Coyotes are a dynasty in the making, nor am I saying that the Coyotes are going to accomplish anywhere near what the Oilers did.  What I am saying though is that you can look at that roster and see some similarities between both of those clubs at least on the players that have come into the Coyotes organization since Gretzky took over.

Lets start with phenom Kyle Turris, Gretzky has said he see’s a little bit of himself in Turris with the way he plays the game…similar vision, puck skill,  and hockey sense, not to mention that Turris has been a dominant player just about everywhere he’s played.  Turris is going to get a lot of ice time this season and there is no reason to think he won’t put up some decent numbers in his rookie campaign.

If you’re going to be the mid 80’s Oilers then you also need to have your version of Jari Kurri and this honor goes to 2nd year player Peter Mueller.  If you’ve watched Mueller play you’ll notice that as far as young players in the current NHL game go, he’s got an abundance of talent.  He had an outstanding rookie season, 22 goals and 32 assists for 54 points and those totals are only going to go up.  Mueller is one of the best kept secrets in the NHL.  His skill and poise with the puck are amazing and Gretzky has so much confidence in Mueller, he plays the point on the Coyotes powerplay.  He makes plays and he scores goals, he is the Jari Kurri of this team for sure.

One guy that would be hard to find a similar player for on this Coyotes team would be Esa Tikkanen, however we are talking the new NHL here.  Tikkanen being the pest he was back in the day and putting up numbers like he did would be a rarity in the new NHL.  Mikkel Boedker though could be the answer to Tikkanen from an offensive point of view.  Boedker was the Coyotes 1st round pick this past June and from all indications, Gretzky has already penciled him in the lineup for the upcoming season.  Boedker is a complete package of skill and speed.  An explosive skater and another player with poise and puck skill. See a trend here?   I’m sure Boedker will have his up and downs during his rookie season but he could be challenging Kyle Turris for the Calder trophy at the end of the season as well.

Even though a guy like Shane Doan was already in the organization, we’ll call him the Glenn Anderson of the Coyotes.  Doan is a guy that you can count on to score goals, big goals much like Anderson did.

Defense is where the Coyotes fall well short of matching up with the Oilers.  There is no Paul Coffey or Kevin Lowe, I’m not even sure there is a Charlie Huddy but they do have a nice top four as far as today’s NHL game goes in Ed Jovanovski, Derek Morris, Zbynek Michalek and Kurt Sauer.

Last but not least, you can’t have an Oilers team without a Mark Messier and since they didn’t have anybody in the organization that could meet those requirements, they went out and traded for that guy.  Nobody is ever going to confuse Olli Jokinen for Mark Messier but you can bet with the way the Coyotes roster is shaping up, Gretzky believes that Jokinen is the “Messier” piece to his puzzle.  A hard driving physical center, hard to play against, a leader on the ice.  That’s what Jokinen brings to the Coyotes much like Messier did with the Oilers.

Like I said, in no way am I saying these current Coyotes players are as good as the former Oilers I compared them to, I’m just saying if you look hard enough you might just see some similarities between the two teams.

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