Throughout the season, The Athletic AZ will share stories, humor and harrowing experiences from the Coyotes’ North American travels.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — It was Nov. 14, 2017, the start of a four-game, eight-day Coyotes road trip through central and eastern Canada. Stop No. 1 was Winnipeg, where the high temperature was 35 degrees Fahrenheit and the low was 25.
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The Coyotes arrived at the Fairmont hotel in the early evening, hoping to change, grab some dinner and get some rest before a game against the Jets the following day. A power outage altered the plans.
Inside the lobby, there was no heat. The kitchen was mostly inoperable, the lights were out and the elevators were dead. Some rookies might have felt cheated, wondering what had happened to the lap of luxury they had heard about while toiling in juniors or the AHL? That wasn’t on Christian Fischer’s mind.
“I was thinking I was going to have to carry everyone’s stuff up the stairs,” he said. “Me and Kells (Clayton Keller) were scared so we went out to dinner and we made sure we stayed out for dinner for a long time. We were probably done with dinner at 9:30 but we were like, ‘Let’s just wait here until we get the OK.’”
It was a savvy move. Back at the hotel, a determined coach Rick Tocchet led a party of mountaineers up the narrow and dark staircase of the Fairmont.
“Twenty floors,” Tocchet said. “We had that long road trip so I had a bunch of bags. I had the big bag, my duffle bag and then my computer bag, which is heavy, too.”
Fox Sports Arizona graphics coordinator Paul Krause made the mistake of leading the climb. Tocchet corrected that quickly.
“You know that mindset when you’re going up the stairs?” he said. “You’re not even thinking. You just want to get it done and I’m seeing him in front of me. I couldn’t get by him because it was so narrow and I was like, ‘Paul, you gotta move out of the way.’”
With his shoulders hunched and his arms drawn in to avoid catching his bags on the walls or the railings, Tocchet set a determined pace. Six floors up, assistant coach John MacLean started laying into Fox Sports Arizona play-by-play man Matt McConnell.
“Told me to get out of the way ‘cause I was moving too slow and he was coming through,” McConnell said, laughing.
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When the group finally reached the summit, the payoff was pitiful.
“I was leaking,” Tocchet said. “I was drenched and I had no power so I was sweating in my dark room for one hour. That was my night in Winnipeg.”
Spread out in the darkness as the temperature continued to drop, the Coyotes players closed ranks to survive … sort of.
“Everyone’s phones were dying so we were searching for alternate power sources,” said defenseman Jason Demers, who knocked on Kevin Connauton’s door. “He has this battery pack and he wouldn’t share it.”
Connauton had a reason.
“I was in survival mode,” he said. “Every man for himself. It was hard times. We couldn’t charge our cellphones.”
Some of the players went out to dinner. Some members of the traveling media gathered in the hotel restaurant for a complimentary candlelight dinner. Others opted to forage for what food they could find.
“I made a little makeshift meal out of cashews from the snack bar,” said Demers, who may have lapsed into embellishment at this point of the story. “I made a fire in my room and I cooked cashews, melted down the chocolate gummy bears — gummy-bear reduction.”
The hotel was still offering a modified room service, so Tocchet and others took advantage.
“The food was good and it was free — that was the best part,” Tocchet said.
Around 11 p.m. the power returned, the lights came on, heat surged through the vents and the cellphones began to rejuvenate. Fischer and Keller returned, collected their bags and made their way up the elevators without shedding a drop of sweat.
The Coyotes lost to the Jets the following day 4-1 but they won the final three games of the trip. With one year’s perspective on that trying night, Tocchet said Friday that he has adopted a new philosophy.
“I’m not sure I’d walk 20 stories for food again,” he said. “If it was steak and lobster, I might do six floors. For 20 floors, I need a lot more candy.”
(Top photo of Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet by Matt Kartozian / USA Today Sports)