Last night, after a strong start the Coyotes played one of the worst second periods it's possible to play, and that was all she wrote.
The Hurricanes are, I think, one of the NHL's best teams and the exact opposite of the Coyotes.
The Canes are one of the NHL's best puck possession team, and they are fourth in expected goals. Unfortunately they are 19th in 5v5 save percentage and 23rd in PDO.
They are a good team let down by bad goaltending.
The Coyotes on the other hand are a bad team propped up by good goaltending.
They got good goaltending last night for the most part. The first and third periods were your typical evenly matched coin-flip NHL periods.
In the second period the Hurricanes completely dominated, scored three goals and the Coyotes should consider themselves lucky it wasn't five.
Now the Coyotes were without Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Darcy Kuemper, so they never really had a good chance to win this game anyways.
It sucks because after a great start to the seasons, the Coyotes added Taylor Hall and things looked like they were going to be really fun. Unfortunately, Darcy Kuemper was injured nearly immediately after the Hall trade, and the Coyotes (predictably) have not been able to maintain the level of goaltending needed to prop up a team that almost always allows more puck possession and scoring chances than they get.
They have now lost six of their last seven.
Somehow they are still only fourth in their division, four points out of first. They hand onto the Wildcard by two points.
Darcy Kuemper and OEL are expected back soon.
Jason Demers is out for a while.
The Coyotes play Boston Saturday, so things aren't getting any easier.
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