After the game last night in which his team was embarrassed at home to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, Phoenix Coyotes Captain Shane Doan was quoted as saying “Right now we aren’t very good, and we haven’t been good in a while.”

That’s an understatement. The Coyotes are awful and they have been for their entire six game home-stand that saw the team go 2-4, with the two wins coming against the two worst teams in hockey, Calgary and Edmonton. In fact, the Coyotes have lost 4 of 5, generating just two points out of ten. They have one win in regulation over the last month and are 3-10 since beating the Islanders one month ago today. The loss was also their fifth this season against the Ducks.

Let us not be fooled by the 5-3 final. The game was a beat-down and the score was flattering to the home team.

Thomas Greiss inexplicably got the start over Mike Smith against the best team in the NHL. As I have said repeatedly, short term statistics are indicative of exactly nothing and especially when you’re facing a superior team, you need to ice your most superior talent. He might look better in limited action lately, but Greiss is not even close to the talent Smith is. Needless to say, he did not fare well. To be fair, the game was close until roughly five minutes into the second when the Ducks scored a pathetic, unscreened, untipped shot from just inside the point. It’s a goal that all NHL goalies have to stop and it seemed to deflate the Coyotes as the Ducks kept coming from there on in.

The second Ducks goal just seemed to kill the Coyotes as they looked listless for the rest of the period. For an example of just how lifeless the Coyotes were after this goal, see the goal that made it 4-1. On this goal, Dustin Penner takes the puck in through the circle and around the back of the net, the whole time making Connor Murphy look like my Grandma had donned skates and a #5 jersey. I like Murphy. A lot. But his effort on that play bordered on hilarious. Seconds later Getzlaf put it in the back of the net and that was all she wrote.

Sure the Coyotes made a bit of a game of it, but they were the recipients of some nice bounces and a 5 on 3 power play. Again, the final score was flattering to them.

Next up are the Jets tomorrow, and since they will have the notorious energy boost from firing their coach, the game will be a tough one. The least the Coyotes can do is show up for that one.

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The Ducks are a great team and really show the importance of having elite scoring forwards. The Coyotes have just as good defense and goaltending (spare me the stats- if you put Smith on Anaheim they are probably even better than they are today) but they aren’t even close in the standings or the ice, as their 0-5 record against them would indicate.

Now, there is nothing I can say that won’t sound like a broken record regarding how much the Coyotes could use some elite scoring talent, but there is another really interesting thing about the Ducks I’d like to point out: Their fourth line centre, Nick Bonino, has 33 points. That would put him at or near the top of the Coyotes scoring charts.
Obviously Bonino is benefiting from insane mismatches and isn’t about to become a star player, but that is exactly the point. I don’t know why NHL teams/head coaches insist on making the fourth line a checking/enforcing line when there is an obvious edge to be had by stacking the line with 2A players. And they are never, or very rarely, deployed in game altering, tight checking situations anyways.

What I mean by 2A is a player who is probably never going to be a scoring star in the NHL or a top two centre on a contending team, but who nevertheless racks up points in the AHL and has a lot of talent. These players could be deployed to easily gain an edge against the inferior, slow, plodding enforcer type players playing on most team’s fourth lines.

Bonino is like Wayne Gretzky when he’s lining up against players like Jeff Halpern or Colton Orr. Now, obviously a player like Bonino is going to play more than the four minutes a night allotted to guys like Bisonette, and so he won’t always have an exploitable matchup, but that begs the question: Why have a whole line that barely plays when over an 82 game schedule players are going to be tired, injured etc? Why burn out your best players instead of rolling four lines?

It seems to me that there is an edge to be had in today’s NHL that – given the state of parity – could be the difference between making and not making the playoffs, or even being a pretender or a contender. That edge is simple: ice talented players on your fourth line. For the Coyotes this means ditching the likes of Chipchura, Halpern and Bissonnette and trying to find guys who can actually put up minutes and exploit matchups with other team’s fourth lines. Of course, this would require someone other than Bruce Boudreau to coach their team with any creativity or ingenuity.

Thanks for reading.

Oh yeah: Come follow me to the Tweet Zone : @Coyotes1234

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