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GLENDALE, Ariz. — Cam Dineen took one look at the Coyotes roster, another look at Arizona’s prospect pool, and then he adopted a humble demeanor.

“There’s a lot of good guys ahead of me,” Dineen said. “I have a long way to go.”

It’s true that Dineen’s current path to the NHL is a bit cluttered. The Coyotes have Oliver-Ekman Larsson anchoring the left side on the team’s No. 1 defensive pairing, and free-agent signing Alex Goligoski locked up until 2021 on the second pairing. On top of that, they have left-handed defensemen Kevin Connauton and Klas Dahlbeck on the NHL roster, and Jakob Chychrun, the No. 16 overall pick in this year’s draft, waiting in the wings.

With two years of OHL eligibility left, however, the Toms River, New Jersey product figures those are problems he can worry about another day.

“You’re still talking about a couple years of development with this guy so we’ll just see where it goes,” said Coyotes player development coach, Mike Van Ryn, who played defense for St. Louis, Florida and Toronto in a seven-year NHL career. “The kid has extremely high hockey sense and hockey IQ. He’s an absolute sponge so when you give him some concepts he can usually apply them right away.”

What Dineen (5’11”, 183) already possesses is what general manager John Chayka identified as the team’s No. 1 need at the draft — before flooding the prospect pool with such players.

“His greatest strength is how he sees the game,” Van Ryn said. “He’s on another level as far as how he reads the offensive portion, how he distributes the puck and how he runs a power play. There’s a lot of smaller defensemen like him in the league now and these smaller defenseman don’t spend much time in their own end because they’re such efficient puck movers; so quick to exit the zone.”

Dineen didn’t take long to grow into his role in his rookie season with North Bay of the OHL. He started on the team’s third pairing, earning a little bit of power play time on the second unit. By the time the season had ended, he led all North Bay defenseman in goals (13), assists (46) and points (59), and he was teamed with fellow Coyotes prospect Kyle Wood on one of the best pairings in the OHL. Dineen’s 59 points were one off the OHL lead by defenseman, set by Barrie’s Rasmus Andersson.

“Going into the season, I didn’t know much about Kyle because he was hurt the first half of year but once he got into games we were always together,” Dineen said. “We even sat next to each other in the locker room.

“I think we just realized what each other’s strengths were and we took advantage of them. He’s a big guy who likes to shoot the puck; I’m a smaller guy who likes to pass first so I was getting the puck to him to set up his big shot.”

Like Wood, Dineen spent an extra week in the Valley after Coyotes development camp in June, working with director of player development Steve Sullivan, Van Ryn and skating coach Dawn Braid. While Wood will likely play for the Coyotes AHL affiliate in Tucson, Dineen will head back to North Bay to apply a few of the concepts the Coyotes staff imparted.

“I think it’s more backwards skating and pivoting push-offs that they’re looking at,’ he said. “It was a really good five days of lessons that really helped so I’m pretty excited to get to North Bay and work on those things.”

Dineen will head to North Bay for training camp in one week, and then report to Arizona on Sept. 10 for rookie camp and training camp.

“It’s definitely become a big competitive pool with the Coyotes and everybody wants to be at the top,” he said. “It’s tough to get there, but I’ll be working hard to do it.”

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Coyotes prospect Cam Dineen embodies NHL’s new-look defense