The Coyotes continue to hang by a thread in the race for the last couple playoff spots in the ultra competitive Western Conference with a shootout loss to the Nashville Predators. After finally getting their first win in March against the Sharks 3-0 on Saturday the team got its fourth point in 3 games to hang around with 79 points in 7th place. Unfortunately a point isn’t good enough right now wih both the Sharks and Avs picking up deuces.
A few notes about the game against the Sharks. I thought Mike Smith had a fantastic game; he was confident and big in goal as usual and really made the best of his break it seemed. He made 42 saves for the shutout and provided the elite goaltending that was one of the major reasons behind their February surge. Michael Stone also had a great game scoring his first goal and adding an assist. That bomb of a shot was on display. I’m loving the growth in his game. Lastly it was great to see the fourth line and some of the call-up’s get some scoring done, they can’t really on Ray Whitney and Radim Vrbata every bloody night. Marc-Antoine Pouliot got two assists.
Back to the Nashville game. You never like to end a period by giving up a goal, especially a rather weak one but they got it back early in the second. It was a high flying uncharacteristically poor defensive game for a lot of the night. I thought both goalies seemed to be struggling a bit despite some magical saves. Rebounds were troubling Smith and you could tell he was frustrated (His reaction on the Fisher goal). Smith on Smith was a sweet move by the rookie, I really like Craig Smith, one of the better offensive talents to come out of the Preds system. Really this game was about defensive lapses and poor coverage by two of the best defensive teams in the league. Rinne and Smith got hung out to dry and came up big when they had to, oddly enough having identical amounts of saves.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson scores the lamest goals ever. Every single goal seems to be a strong wrister from the blueline yet it miraculously always goes top shelf. Other than that he made some nice plays and was one of the few defencemen that actually had a great game. A goal and an assist, plus 3 and leading the team with 26 minutes of ice-time. The future of the Coyotes defence is well on his way to being a top-pairing guy.
Daymond Langkow finally got his thumb out of his you know what notching his first goal since, well I can’t really remember it was so long ago (February 23rd). Other than the tip though he was his usual invisible self. He needs to start getting into the dirty areas again if he wants any more goals.
Rostislav Klesla in his second game back from injury looked really rusty. He looked like the Klesla from last year being out muscled and giving up on plays way too easily. The team needs him to be at his best as he is usually the anchor on the penalty kill.
Raffi Torres continued his hot streak with another goal, his third goal in three straight games. He played a season high 16 minutes and added some nice grit to each line played on. He’s looking more and more like the sparkplug that can be put up and down the line-up. I think we can officially say goodbye to Taylor Pyatt as a Coyote.
Martin Hanzal missed the game and is still gone with an “Upper Body” injury. He’s still listed as day to day, but everybody seems to be really hush hush over it. When he fell it looked like the wrist he injured earlier in the year. If he’s out for too long Langkow and Vermette need to step up.
I think Dave Tippett summed it up pretty well; "We had to rally (three times) because we were making poor mistakes," he said. "We've got to get these mistakes taken care of. They can't happen this time of year and they're mistakes by veteran players, which is even more frustrating.
"I give our guys full credit for coming back, digging in and finding a way to get a point. But we have to play tight hockey and not give away chances like we did tonight."
Thanks for reading.
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