Arizona Coyotes season snapshot awards

With the NHL pausing the 2019-20 regular season on March 12 due to the concerns surrounding the coronavirus, NHL.com is taking stock of each of the League's 31 teams.

Today, the award-worthy candidates for the Arizona Coyotes at the pause:

The Arizona Coyotes began the season believing they would qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2011-12. A trade with the New Jersey Devils on Dec. 16 for forward Taylor Hall, who was voted winner of the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP in 2018, added to that belief before injuries and inconsistent play caught up with them, leaving Arizona four points behind the Nashville Predators and Vancouver Canucks for the second wild card from the Western Conference.

But there have been some strong performances for the Coyotes while they've tried to end their seven-season postseason drought.

To showcase those performances, here are the top players in various categories:

MVP

Darcy Kuemper's value to the Coyotes became clearer after he sustained a lower-body injury Dec. 19 and missed 28 games. Before he was injured, Kuemper was 15-8-2 and ranked second in the NHL among goalies who had played at least 20 games with a 2.17 goals-against average and a .929 save percentage, behind Ben Bishop of the Dallas Stars, who had a 2.07 GAA and a .933 save percentage. Without Kuemper, Arizona was 11-13-4 and dropped from first place in the Pacific Division to fifth.

Rookie

Barrett Hayton, the No. 5 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, has been limited to 20 NHL games this season because of injury and his time playing at the 2020 IIHF World Junior Championship. The 19-year-old forward has four points (one goal, three assists) for Arizona but demonstrated his potential at the WJC, when as Canada captain he had 12 points (six goals, six assists) in seven games, including a goal in a 4-3 win against Russia in the championship game while playing through an upper-body injury.

Defenseman

Alex Goligoski took on more responsibility when Niklas Hjalmarsson missed three months with a fractured fibula and is first among Coyotes defensemen with 32 points (four goals, 28 assist) in 70 games, including 11 on the power play. He leads Arizona with an average of 23:03 of ice time per game, including 2:22 per game on the penalty kill (second among Arizona defensemen behind Hjalmarsson's 2:40). Goligoski is first on the Coyotes with a plus-8 rating and 134 blocked shots.

Defensive forward

Fourth-line center Brad Richardson has been a valuable contributor defensively for the Coyotes, who are tied with the Columbus Blue Jackets for third in the NHL allowing 2.61 goals per game and are fifth on the penalty kill at 82.7 percent. Richardson is first on the Coyotes in winning 52.0 percent of his defensive-zone face-offs and leads Arizona forwards with an average of 2:34 of shorthanded ice time per game. He has 44 blocked shots, second among Coyotes forwards behind Derek Stepan's 54 despite playing 11 fewer games because of injury.

Comeback player

Antti Raanta has been solid this season after recovering from knee surgery that caused him to miss the final 59 games of last season. In 33 games, Raanta is 15-14-3 with a 2.63 GAA, a .921 save percentage (tied for eighth in NHL) and two shutouts; he missed time with a lower-body injury while Kuemper was out.