This year, for the first time since becoming the youngest general manager in NHL history, John Chayka will begin to stand trial on a massive, three-year construction project inside the Arizona Coyotes organization.

Since joining the club in 2015 as a 25-year-old assistant GM in charge of analytics, the Coyotes have adopted a brand new coaching staff, a remade roster and a revitalized strategy from both a business and a hockey standpoint.

To suggest the Coyotes have changed in the short time that Chayka has been with the organization would be an understatement. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is the only player who was on the team’s roster prior to Chayka’s arrival in Arizona just three years ago.

It’s now time to see whether those changes can allow the Coyotes to take an important step forward, or if the organization will remain mired in mediocrity. Bottom line: These are now Chayka’s Coyotes, for better or worse.

Hockey whiz kid

All of this was set in motion during the 2013 Memorial Cup in Saskatoon, the largest city in Canada’s Saskatchewan province. This is where Gary Drummond, then part of the Coyotes’ hockey operations department, discovered a 23-year-old business and hockey whiz from Jordan Station, Ontario named John Chayka.

“I met up with John five or six times that week and I was just tremendously impressed with his passion for hockey and his knowledge about hockey,” Drummond said. “I made a quick assessment of his character, all of which has turned out on the plus side of even what I thought. He’s an outstanding young man in every way, as far as I’m concerned.”

Back then, Chayka was working for a company called Stathletes, a hockey analytics firm that he co-founded with Neil Lane in 2009. Chayka was consulting for various NHL teams at the Memorial Cup.

Drummond said that he stayed in touch with Chayka and eventually introduced him to then-coach Dave Tippett and then-GM Don Maloney and began strongly pushing for the Coyotes to hire him as an assistant prior to the 2015 season.

One year later, Chayka was promoted to general manager as a 26-year-old in a move that sent shockwaves throughout the industry. Chayka said he took the year to evaluate the organization to determine the changes he needed to make in order to begin his large-scale renovation of the franchise.

Chayka did this in order to avoid what he calls “user error,” in which he might make a knee-jerk transaction that he would regret soon after. So, Chayka stood pat for most the 2016-17 season and began the heavy lifting the following off-season.

Among the moves the Coyotes did make that year was acquiring the contract of Pavel Datsyuk in order to get a first-round draft pick from the Detroit Red Wings. The club turned that pick into defenseman Jakob Chychrun, and used its own to draft Clayton Keller.

Prior to last season, Chayka was promoted once again to also become the president of hockey operations when Drummond stepped down from the position. This is where Chayka really began to break ground on his construction project.

At the 2017 draft, Chayka sent Connor Murphy and Laurent Dauphin (whom he later re-acquired) to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for Niklas Hjalmarsson. He then packaged a 2017 first-rounder with Anthony DeAngelo in order to acquire Derek Stepan and Antti Raanta, both of whom are playing integral roles in Arizona while DeAngelo played in just 23 games last year with the New York Rangers.

During training camp that year, Chayka dealt Jamie McGinn to the Florida Panthers to acquire Jason Demers, who played with Ekman-Larsson on the Coyotes’ top defensive pair last season. And over the course of the 2017-18 season, Chayka also brought in Richard Panik, Darcy Kuemper, Josh Archibald and Trevor Murphy.

This past offseason, Chayka turned Max Domi into Alex Galchenyuk, signed Michael Grabner in free agency and brought in Vinnie Hinostroza and Jordan Oesterle to shore up the team’s speed and scoring.

In addition to Ekman-Larsson, who was signed to an eight-year contract extension in July, center Brad Richardson is the only other player who was been on the Coyotes’ NHL roster for more than two years.

“A lot has happened in just a few years,” Ekman-Larsson said of the roster turnover. “I think we have a lot of young and talented players. You can tell we’re moving in the right direction.”

Shared philosophy

For many, working in hockey operations means being in charge of players and coaches. But for every change Chayka's made on the ice, he’s made at least two off of it.

Chayka considers his biggest change to be the infrastructure he’s instilled within the organization. He’s brought in people who share his philosophy.

Coyotes President and CEO Ahron Cohen, who came to the organization about three weeks after Chayka in 2015, has noticed that the popular perception of Chayka is a number-crunching introvert whose focus is on hockey and nothing else.

According to Cohen, that couldn't be more wrong.

Cohen remembers back to last year when his young son collapsed at daycare and had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.

“It was the middle of the work day and I rushed over there as quick as I could,” Cohen remembered. “Within 15-20 minutes, the first people there were John and his wife bringing us food and making sure everything was okay.”

Cohen, whose son was not seriously harmed in the incident, said he holds a close personal relationship with Chayka and has taken notice of the thoughtful touch Chayka places upon each aspect of the organization.

“He's a tremendous talent evaluator and I don't just mean talent on the ice,” Cohen said of Chayka. “He's an exceptional talent evaluator in terms of bringing people into the organization. What he's done in such a short amount of time, he's brought all the right people into all the right places.”

Under Chayka’s direction and business savvy, the Coyotes have changed everything from the way they travel to the way they train and what players eat before and after a game. Chayka, along with Cohen, helped bring the club’s AHL affiliate to Tucson. The Coyotes have placed a greater emphasis than ever on making a positive impact on the community.

“You kind of look at it like building out a business plan,” said Chayka, who earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in 2014. “In each department, you have to have a key advantage over the other 30 teams in the league. That’s how you go on to win consistently.

“Quite frankly, I did view this as basically a startup. We had to build out the infrastructure and the people. We had limited pieces we felt were long-term solutions.”

Drummond, who has been an investor and board member for several private and public companies — including serving as the Chairman and CEO of Direct Energy Management Limited and Universal Energy Group, both of which he co-founded — knows a thing or two about business.

Drummond, 67, said Chayka is among the brightest business minds he’s ever come across.

“Throughout my career in different businesses,” Drummond said. “There have been two or three of what I would call special business people. They were all in their 20s when I met them, and they all did extremely well. I thought John fit that mold and was going to have an outstanding NHL career. It was an out-of-the-box decision in many ways, only because John was so young and inexperienced."

'Build a following'

Under direction from owner Andrew Barroway, Chayka was tasked with finding a way to stop the team's bleeding and to build something that would last. Chayka said he knew fans wouldn’t gravitate to a team that performs inconsistently.

Chayka quickly understood he was going to have to be patient and do things the hard way.

“We wanted to build something successful year-after-year, and that’s really the only way to build fandom in this market and to build a following,” Chayka said. “People don’t really seem to gravitate toward a team that’s good for one year and bad for three. We want a consistent team, and when you look at how that’s done, it’s no secret. It’s drafting, developing, being strong in premium positions and being disciplined to put a group together that checks all those boxes.”

Being a relatively low-budget team, the Coyotes have the luxury of cap space but also have a disproportionate number of players signed to entry-level deals, which saves the team money for the time being. However, those deals will eventually expire and those players will end up getting paid one way or another.

If the Coyotes are able to take a step forward this season — perhaps by snagging a playoff spot or even being in contention for one late in the season — it could determine if Chayka is able to keep this group together.

It’s also no secret that the Coyotes are searching for a long-term arena solution in the Valley. If the team is able to become a consistent competitor, the subsequent fan interest and financial backing could make the big-picture stuff run much smoother.

“I find it to be an exciting proposition,” Chayka said. “We’re trying to get to a certain level, but we’re growing and there’s going to be growing pains along the way. At the same time, you feel like there are long-term pieces here that can be part of a championship team.

“With a great team and a new arena, the sky's the limit.”

The extent to which Chayka has affected change within the organization in such a short amount of time is nothing short of remarkable — especially when one considers that it would have been easy for Chayka, a first-time hockey executive, to simply go through the motions and bide his time for better opportunity somewhere else. Instead, he opted to tear the Coyotes down and rebuild them by his standards.

“John’s just done a magnificent, mind-boggling job of turning that roster around where it has lots of upside and a good amount of depth,” Drummond said. “I hope they surprise a lot of people around the league, and I think they will. I think he deserves an awful lot of credit for facilitating that.”

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Richard Morin covers the Coyotes and Diamondbacks for azcentral sports. He can be reached at richard.morin@arizonarepublic.com and by phone at 480-316-2493. Follow him on Twitter @ramorin_azc.