Coyotes keeping kid from dark side and other notes

The Coyotes would like their promising rookie Daniel Carcillo to show a little more restraint on his own. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The most surprising team in the NHL, the Phoenix Coyotes, is maturing in front of your very eyes, mostly because it is now an organization capable of making mature decisions.

After chasing veteran free agents with a whiff of cachet the past few seasons -- remember the short-lived Brett Hull experiment or the repatriation of a disinterested Jeremy Roenick in the desert? -- Don Maloney, the new, clear-eyed general manager, and coach Wayne Gretzky are doing things the right way. They are committed to building through young players although not necessarily to young players who play, at times, as if they should be committed.

Phoenix demoted winger Daniel Carcillo to the AHL on Monday in the wake of his fight last Saturday against Nashville enforcer Darcy Hordichuk, a scrap that also resulted in misconduct and game misconducts for the excitable rookie, who engaged in some post-fisticuffs taunting. Gretzky likes Carcillo's moxie and energy. He thinks Carcillo can grow into a 30-goal scorer, a poor man's Rick Tocchet who can ride shotgun on a first- or second-line. But Gretzky had to initiate several chats this season about skating the fine line between combativeness and chaos, something the fractious Carcillo, who led Columbus rookie Jared Boll by 40 penalty minutes in that dubious statistical category, crossed far too often.

Twenty-five penalty minutes in 9:16 against the Predators, incidentally, is not such a fine line.

So, three games since returning to the lineup after he missed 16 matches because of a knee injury - sustained coming to the aid of teammate Keith Yandle, who was engaged in a tussle with the Sharks' Roenick -- Carcillo was dispatched to the minors. For how long? According to Gretzky, the answer is pretty much up to Carcillo.

"He's in a really tough situation," Gretzky told Phoenix reporters on Monday. "He's the kind of guy we need to play with a lot of energy and a lot of passion. With that, there's gonna be some effects toward the hockey club, but that's sort of (his) makeup as a hockey player. Obviously, the positives outweigh the negatives, but we've talked to him continuously about the after-effects. The fights and all that kind of stuff we can live with. The penalties we can live with, but the continuous 10-minute misconducts, game misconducts ... it's just at the point where it's not acceptable any more.

"You've got a whole team of players that are playing with a great deal of discipline," Gretzky continued, "and we're all on the same page trying to make the Stanley Cup playoffs. He is, too, but he's just got to be a little smarter about it. We just feel it wasn't the right time for him to be screaming at referees, it wasn't the right time for the badgering that went on after the fight (with Hordichuk)."

Of course, every NHL agitator has to learn the boundaries, and deal with the devilish side of his nature that makes him an effective player in the first place. Some, like Sean Avery of the New York Rangers, take years. Some, like Philadelphia's Steve Downie, might never get it. Carcillo seems to be cut in the Avery mold - loud and animated. One would hope that the cold shower Maloney and Gretzky gave him Monday will have the desired effect. Carcillo will be back, and the organization that hasn't won a playoff round since 1987 will be better off for its no-nonsense stance.

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