ARIZONA COYOTES | SEASON-LONG DOC
INSIDE ACCESS
THE STORY
The Coyotes wanted to take fans inside the building, not the highlights, the whole operation. Players, coaches, the front office, the staff. How a team is scouted, drafted, trained, and built.
The backdrop made it worth telling. This team missed the playoffs. But underneath the losing season was a young roster and a plan, a group trying to build a champion from the bottom. We weren't documenting a winner. We were documenting how one gets made.
WHAT WE UNCOVERED
A champion is built long before it ever wins, and it’s a sum of everything a club does.
Most fans see the result. We had access to everything that comes first, the years of work underneath it. The evaluations, the arguments, the bets placed on young players, the roster assembled one decision at a time. That work is the real story of a team, and it happens in the seasons nobody's celebrating. We were inside the build, not the payoff.
THE NARRATIVE
Bill Armstrong, the general manager, let us all the way in.
That access was the whole thing, earned through trust, and once we had it, nothing was off limits. We built the season as episodes, each one following different people through the real events of the year, from the draft, through preseason, into the season itself. This was the building shown unfiltered, the way a team actually works when the cameras usually aren't running.
The center of it was the draft. We were in the war room for the scouting, the evaluations, the emotion a coach carries for a player he wants, and then the day itself, the roster taking shape pick by pick. The moments a player falls to them. The ones who slip away by a spot. Real stakes, caught as they happened.
It ends where the build was, mid-climb. The playoffs came and went without them. The work continues. A champion takes years to assemble, and this was a season of assembling one.
THE WORK
+ Executive Production
+ Producing
+ Directing
+ Story Development
+ Post Production
THE RECOGNITION
EMMY AWARD 2023
Three nominations at the 2023 Rocky Mountain Southwest Emmy Awards. Winner, Sports Story, Short/Long Form Content, for the feature documentary "Inside Access – No Pressure No Diamonds."