(Steven Alkok/Icon Sportswire)

Emotion ruled the Twitter-verse when the Coyotes made their final roster cuts on Sunday. Maybe logic will eventually win the day.

While it was difficult to watch 2015 first-round pick Dylan Strome head back to the Ontario Hockey League after the Coyotes clawed their way to four goals in six preseason games, it was just as prudent a move as the team’s decision to send forward Max Domi back last season.

It’s a rare 18-year-old who is ready to play in the National Hockey League. Strome is not Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid — franchise players whose gifts were so exceptional and so obvious that they transcended the typical concerns about youth. Strome is a gifted center prospect inside a decidedly teenaged body.

“Right now, his mind and his anticipation and thinking of the game is strong enough but his body needs to get stronger,” Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said Sunday. “He understands that. He recognizes that for him to be a good player in the NHL, he’s going to have to work on the physical attributes.”

You could see this every time he walked through the hallways of Gila River Arena out of his pads. You could sense it in the adolescent’s eyes through which he still views the world.

“I asked him (Thursday) morning, ‘did you have breakfast?'” Tippett said, chuckling. “He said, ‘yeah, I had a bagel.’ (I said) no, that’s not good enough. Get up and have breakfast.

“There are some things like that that young players have to learn.”

General manager Don Maloney admitted it was tempting to consider a nine-game trial for Strome before having to burn the first year of his entry-level contract. He does possess exceptional tools at a position where the Coyotes desperately need those tools, but if his skills were so NHL refined, they would have jumped out in the preseason, making the Coyotes’ decision simple.

“When we got into the preseason games with the size and pace of the NHL game, he wasn’t quite there and it just made sense to give him more time,” Maloney said.

Although Maloney does see some value in trial periods, nine games would not have been enough to change his thinking on Strome. Nine games would not have been enough time to gauge whether Strome could handle the physical demands of an 82-game grind against fully grown men.

“You get so concerned with injuries to young, physically immature players,” Maloney said. “All of the sudden he takes a hit to the shoulder and he’s out two to three months. Then you’ve retarded his development.

“This was a long-term decision for the franchise.”

Strome opened plenty of eyes with his promise, but the Coyotes do not yet feel he is ready to deliver on that promise.

“We explained it’s a little bit like Max last year,” Tippett said. “It’s part of the process that you go through and he’ll become a better player for it.”

When exactly that future puts him in a Coyotes jersey is still a guess.

“Nobody has a crystal ball to tell you that,” Tippett said, “but I guarantee you he’ll come next year and be a better player.”

With so many of his tools already jumping out in camp, Strome has a good shot of making the team next season if he can add some strength and weight while refining the other parts of his game. He is in the proper place to accomplish those goals.

“He’s going to have a great future ahead of him,” Tippett said. “He’s an excellent young player and you love the passion he has for the game.”

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