With pucks pooling around his feet at center ice, some dripping in ice shavings from the drills that had gone before, Coyotes associate coach Jim Playfair selected one with his stick blade and flipped it down the ice.
He bent his head, monitoring the action from underneath a red hat, before he blew the whistle tucked in his left glove.
“Here we go,” he called out. “Here we go.”
As head coach Dave Tippett traveled back to the Valley on Friday from the World Cup of Hockey in Toronto after Team North America was eliminated a day earlier, Playfair was at the helm for the first practice of training camp.