Peter Muellers star never shined so brightly as in his rookie season -

Peter Mueller probably won’t stop wondering until the day he retires.

“I still ask myself, ‘Why am I not in the NHL?’” the current Kometa Brno and former Coyotes forward said. “I wish I had a chance and I wish I could still play there because I still feel like I can.”

Time is running out for the Czech Extraliga star, who will turn 32 on April 27, but if you think this is a sad story about unfulfilled dreams, Mueller has a different script to reveal. Real life is rarely clear-cut tragedy or triumph. It’s a gray and nuanced blend of luck, timing, mistakes, lessons learned and knowledge applied. Mueller may have missed his chance at a long-term NHL career — despite a terrific first season in which he posted a Coyotes rookie-record 22 goals and 54 points, tying him for third among NHL rookies with Jonathan Toews — but that doesn’t mean his life is full of regret.

“I wish I had known then what I know now,” said Mueller, who signed a three-year extension with Kometa last season. “For North Americans, we’re so driven to make it in the NHL — which is obviously everyone’s goal — that if it doesn’t work out, it’s almost like we’re stuck in our ways and end up playing in the American (Hockey) League or the East Coast League (ECHL). A lot of players don’t even consider looking anywhere else.”

Europe certainly wasn’t on Mueller’s mind when the No. 8 overall pick in the 2006 NHL Draft made his Coyotes debut in 2007 — the same season that center Martin Hanzal debuted in Arizona — after a second season with the Western Hockey League’s Everett Silvertips.

With Wayne Gretzky as coach, Mueller was afforded a lot of freedom to be creative at the offensive end. He was also granted a big role, logging an average ice time of 17:16 per game, which was the fourth-highest total among Coyotes forwards behind Shane Doan, Kyle Turris and Radim Vrbata.

“He and Marty Hanzal were two guys who were supposed to turn the franchise around and there was a lot pressure on them — maybe too much because they were just 19-year-old kids and maybe they got rushed into a bigger role too soon,” said veteran defenseman Zbyněk Michálek, who was entering his third season with the Coyotes. “He was a high draft pick and he was a really talented player coming in. He was poised with the puck with good size and he could skate well, too.”

Mueller finished third on the team in points that season and he finished fifth in Calder Trophy voting for NHL rookie of the year. That was as good as it ever got.

The next season, the Coyotes’ financial troubles came to a head when owner Jerry Moyes told commissioner Gary Bettman and other league officials that he planned to stop funding the club. The league agreed to provide emergency funding if Moyes ceded voting control. One year later, Gretzky resigned as coach, Dave Tippett took over behind the bench and Mueller was starting from scratch.

“I was so excited to get going that first year with Wayne Gretzky,” Mueller said. “I just wanted to prove to myself and the organization that I could do it and personally it was a great year for me. It was one of, if not the best year I had in my career.

“Wayne was my first coach so he influenced a lot of what I did. Everything he said and did behind the bench helped me thrive. Then Tip came in and it was almost like a completely different tone. I felt like he wanted me in more of a defensive role than I was used to under Wayne and the tension just built day after day. I could feel it. It just wasn’t working and it was tough to almost dig myself out of it. I was getting less and less minutes each game. It hurts to talk about it because I really wish it had turned out differently.”

Mueller slumped to four goals and 17 points in 54 games of his third season with the Coyotes. As the 2008 trade deadline approached, he and his agent, Paul Cappizano, didn’t see a future for Mueller in Arizona so they requested a trade from Coyotes GM Don Maloney. Maloney granted that wish, sending Mueller and forward Kevin Porter to the Colorado Avalanche for forward Wojtek Wolski.

The trade paid immediate dividends for both sides. Wolski had six goals and 18 points in 18 games for the Coyotes, who finished with a franchise record 107 points. Mueller had nine goals and 20 points in 15 games for Colorado, but on April 4, 2010, a hit from San Jose defenseman Rob Blake resulted in a concussion for Mueller, ending his season. Mueller returned for training camp the next fall, but he took a stick to the head in the first preseason game and suffered another concussion. He played three games at the start of the 2011-12 season, but didn’t play again until Jan. 12, 2012.

“It took a lot of time and patience and it was a process, that’s for sure,” Mueller said. “There are exercises you can do, like short or long distance eye exercises or light training, but the worst part, and we all know this, is there’s no real guidelines. There’s a list of 50 symptoms that everyone hears, but they might as well be one symptom because no one knows the difference between Player A and Player B.

“You’d have good days and try to string a couple together and then you’d have a week or two of not feeling good and you really didn’t know why. There were months where I couldn’t do anything and didn’t because of the severity of it. It was really hard to get through it. Thank goodness I had my wife (Taylar) here to support me the whole way.”

Mueller’s challenges weren’t over when he finally returned to the ice. He had seven goals and 16 points in 32 games, Colorado missed the playoffs and the Avs let Mueller depart in free agency to Florida, where he signed a one-year contract for $1.725 million and played one, lockout-shortened season before he was out of the NHL.

“When I came back after a full year and a half of not playing any hockey, it was a battle,” he said. “You can condition all you want but to jump into games when the team is that late in the season is so hard. Everyone was on a different level of playing games. That’s tough for any athlete to do right off the bat, but I set the bar pretty high when I arrived in Colorado so obviously when I came back it wasn’t as good as when I arrived.

“I have no hard feelings toward Colorado. They stayed with me every step of the way and they were great. I owe a lot to them. The medical staff, the hospitals and the doctors were truly outstanding with my recovery. It was just a tough situation.”

Mueller played a season with Kloten in the Swiss league. He signed a two-way deal with the St. Louis Blues but balked at the idea of going to the AHL, so he returned to Kloten for one more season and then played a year with the Malmo Redhawks in Sweden.

“My final NHL attempt was a PTO (professional tryout) with Boston,” he said. “I think I played one or two preseason games but because I had gotten so used to how they sharpened my skates in Europe, I didn’t know how to transition over to what was needed in the States, so I was basically playing with no edge for all of camp.

“When I went over to Switzerland, my equipment manager didn’t speak English, just Swiss Deutsche. I got to the point where I liked my skates but I didn’t know how he sharpened them. What they do in Europe, it’s almost old-school. Before I went there the edges would be a 3-4. When I came back with Boston, I didn’t have skates sharpened for like two weeks and when they did, I said sharpen them as a 1 and that’s basically what goalies use. My whole PTO with Boston, my blades were a 1. You’d try to stop in the corner and it just wasn’t working. It was a very unsettling and frustrating thing to have happen when you almost feel like you have one last shot.”

Mueller played the 2017-18 season in the Austrian league with Salzburg, scoring 14 goals and totaling 42 points in 38 games for a team that advanced to Game 7 of the championship series. He would have stayed had they offered more than a one-year contract. Instead, he headed to Brno where has played the past two seasons and will spend the next two once hockey resumes in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Michálek signed with Kometa last season for the final 13 games of the regular season and the postseason. When he walked into the locker room, he saw a different Mueller.

“He was more mature, he was talking about his life and putting everything more in perspective,” Michálek said. “That injury kind of changed him and you could see it left a mark on him. Knowing everything that he went through with his health issues and concussions and injuries, it was great to see him playing at a high level and living a good, healthy life.”

Along that path, Mueller picked up a fair amount of the German language and he has gained an appreciation for Europe’s cities and cultures.

“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned has just been to slow down,” said Mueller, who has a boy (Charlie, 6) and a newborn baby girl (Rosie). “We have lived in some really cool cities like Zurich and Salzburg where you can go out and have a coffee and stay at a coffee shop for an hour to two hours and it has a family atmosphere. You really start to value your time together.

“The Christmas markets are another unbelievable thing over in Europe. Where we have lived, you can go out of your front door and go grab a coffee or go out to eat or go shopping and it’s all a five-minute walk. There’s arts and crafts, street food, small things that you don’t think about too much. I know in the States there are certain areas in cities that have similar things, but in Salzburg or Zurich or Munich with such history, they take it to another level.”

Mueller flew back to Denver this month before the Czech Republic closed its borders. He’ll spend the next couple of months there before returning to Arizona where the family still spends all of its summers in a house that is rented the rest of the year (Max Domi was one of those renters).

“I still believe in the Coyotes and I still follow them,” he said. “I don’t know a lot of guys, if any guys that are still playing on the Coyotes, but I still view them as my team and we still call Arizona our home. Always has been, always will be.”

Mueller admits that there are times when his mind strays to what might have been in Arizona, but age has provided him with the wisdom and perspective to move past those thoughts.

“It’s almost like a dark hole if you go down that path and start thinking of what things could have been instead of living in the present,” he said. “The first couple years of my professional career didn’t go where they should have gone or where I hoped they’d go, but with everything that has happened and all of my opportunities, I have to look on the other side of the coin. I have a great family, we have seen the world and we’ve done some cool things. I’m pretty happy with how it has panned out for the last few years.”

Shooting stars

Peter Mueller isn’t the only former Coyotes player who couldn’t match his early performance with the team. Here’s a look at five more players who had promising starts that they couldn’t sustain, and couldn’t reproduce with another NHL team.

Forward Landon Wilson: Signed as a free agent in 2000, Wilson scored 18 goals in his first season with the Coyotes and his first full NHL season. The following season, he took a puck to the eye that forever altered his vision. He never scored more than seven goals in an NHL season after that, and spent four seasons in Europe.

Forward Krys Kolanos: The 19th overall pick in the 2000 NHL Draft got off to a promising start the following year, his first in the NHL. He had 11 goals and 22 points in 57 games, and produced one of the more memorable moments in franchise history, beating goalie Patrick Roy on a penalty shot that caused Roy to lose his marbles. A cheap hit from the Sabres’ Vaclav Varada sent Kolanos headfirst into the boards resulting in a severe concussion. He managed just nine goals and 20 points in his final 92 NHL games.

Forward Marc Arcobello: Arcobello was a flash in the pan in the dismal 2014-15 season. Signed off waivers in February, he had nine goals and 16 points in 27 games. He lasted just 20 games with Toronto (three goals, four points) the following season before heading to Switzerland, where he has averaged more than a point per game for Bern.

Goalie Louis Domingue: When Mike Smith went down with an injury in December 2016, Domingue stepped into the fold and went 7-2-2 in his next 11 starts. He finished the season with a career-high 39 games played, a 2.75 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage. He couldn’t replicate that the following season, the Coyotes eventually waived him and he has played for three NHL teams since.

Forward Brendan Perlini: The 12th overall pick in the 2014 draft had a promising 17 goals and 30 points in 70 games in 2017-18. Less than a year later, he was shipped to Chicago along with Dylan Strome for Nick Schmaltz. Perlini is now with Detroit. He has 25 points combined over his past two NHL seasons.

(Photo of Peter Mueller: Jacob de Golish / Getty Images / The Athletic illustration)

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