Follow @james_tanner123 After waiting out the pre-season with the patience of a father of two girls forced to watch that God-forsaken movie Frozen for the six-hundred-thousandth time, the regular season finally gets under way tonight, as the Jets come to town for the first of a four game home-stand.
The Jets are a lot like the Coyotes - both teams feature young players looking to make an impact, neither are expected by many people to make the playoffs nor made them last year, and neither team made many off season moves, perhaps banking on some internal improvements to help the team take the next step.
The Coyotes have Smith. The Jets have Pavelec.
The Coyotes have Boedker. The Jets have Kane.
The Stone and Murphy. The Jets have Trouba and Bogosian.
Both teams won 37 games last year.
The Coyotes literally used to be the Jets.
Of course the teams are not exactly the same, but my point here is that there are enough similarities to make it somewhat interesting that they open the season against each other. You have to figure, both teams probably appreciate the matchup. (As in, who'd want to open the season against Chicago or LA?).
Last year saw the Jets finish five points behind the Coyotes, but there is a crucial difference between the two teams: The Jets caught fire and went 11-3-1 after hiring Paul Maurice as coach near the end of last season. The Coyotes went the opposite direction, going on a huge losing streak to end the season after Smith went down with injury.
In three meetings last year, the Jets won all of them, although two were in a shootout. Hopefully this means the Coyotes are due!
The lines the Coyotes will be using tonight, according to AZ Central's Sarah McLellan are as follows:
Doan-Vermette- Boedker Erat - Hanzal - Moss Korpikoski - Gagner - Klinkhammer Crombeen - Vitale - McMillan Note here that instead of your traditional top-six/bottom-six setup, the Coyotes three balanced lines that you would be hard pressed to rank. Each line contains a defensive forward and each one contains some semblance of offense. For instance, Moss is up on the second line, which I assume is because the Coyotes will attempt to win games by lulling the opposition to sleep. Should that fail to work, they will at least try to play defense and prevent goals, attacking only when the other team makes a mistake. It will be interesting to see,with this lineup, if the Coyotes even bother to forecheck, or if they just keep four men back all the time.
Also interesting about the lineup is that Gagner is back at centre. They pracitced the other day with him on the wing and healthy-scratch Hodgman at centre. Personally, I don't care what position they play Gagner, but at least with Hodgman at C there was the chance of some offense. I could be wrong, and am at least willing to wait till I see an actual game to complain too much, but it seems like Gagner should be used in more of a scoring capacity. I can't see Klinkhammer knocking home too many sweet feeds here.
On the defensive side of things, the Coyotes will be dressing the five you expect (OEL, Yandle,Michalek,Stone, Murphy) as well as Summers over Schlemko. The other scratch is Chipchura. If the lines stay the same as McLellan reported, then it also seems the pre-season experiment of playing Yandle with OEL is over. I hope not though, I think it could pay massive dividends.
Thanks again, not only for reading today, but for any of you who stuck it out through the summer. Welcome back anyone just remembering today that hockey is a thing that you like.