Thursday, May 5, 2016

GLENDALE, ARIZONA --- Arizona Coyotes President and CEO Anthony LeBlanc announced today that John Chayka (SHUY-ka) has been named as the Coyotes’ new General Manager. As per Club policy, terms of the contract were not disclosed. Chayka becomes the eighth general manager in franchise history.

The Coyotes also announced that Alternate Governor Gary Drummond will now serve as President of Hockey Operations and Dave Tippett will take on the new role of Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations/Head Coach. Tippett has also agreed to a new five-year contract. Under the new structure, Drummond will oversee the Coyotes’ hockey operations department and Tippett will be involved in hockey personnel decisions. Drummond’s main role will be to ensure communication and collaboration within the department and serve as a catalyst for ensuring an alignment of vision and objectives between ownership, management, coaches and the team’s core players.

“We’re very pleased to name John as our new General Manager,” Drummond said. “John is among the best and brightest minds in hockey. He is knowledgeable and driven and has an incredible passion for the game. He brings an innovative approach to assessing talent and looking at player development and combined with his strong analytics expertise, we feel that he’s the right choice for the direction we want to go with our franchise.”

“I am extremely grateful for this opportunity,” Chayka said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Gary, Dave and Anthony and I look forward to working with them. We are excited about the challenge ahead and focused on taking our team to the next level. We have a great core of players and prospects here and a very bright future ahead of us.”

Chayka joined the Coyotes last season as Assistant General Manager/Analytics. He was involved in all areas of hockey operations including NHL, minor league and amateur player evaluation as well as player development and coaching support.

Prior to joining the Coyotes, he co-founded and served as Director of Hockey Operations at Stathletes Inc. since 2009. Stathletes is a hockey analytics firm that tracks data through an intensive video analysis process and breaks down the game to provide objective insight into player and team performance tendencies.

The native of Jordan Station, Ontario earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in 2014. Chayka was drafted to the Ontario Hockey League but committed to going to college instead. He played Junior “A” hockey in Canada and was a top scorer in the Maritime Junior “A” League. He also played briefly in the BCHL before suffering a career ending injury.