Coyotes come back from three goals down for shootout victory

The Coyotes didn’t exactly play well on Friday night against the Edmonton Oilers, but a shootout goal gave them a 4-3 victory on the road.  With the victory, Phoenix has now won five games in a row and are on a current seven-game unbeaten streak, all games in which Shane Doan has been out with injury.

Things were looking pretty bleak for the Yotes a few minutes past the midway point of the second period.  They were in a 3-0 hole against a young team gaining confidence by the minute, but a Lauri Korpikoski goal late in the second period put the Desert Dogs right back into the game.  Radim Vrbata scored more than a minute later to get Phoenix within a goal.

Phoenix played a real solid third period, outshooting Edmonton 12-5, but they still couldn’t get the puck in the net past youngster Devan Dubnyk until the remaining seconds.  For some reason, the Oilers forgot that Wojtek Wolski was wide open in front of the net and he was able to tie it up with 35 seconds remaining.  Those things happen though when you face a team as young as the Oilers.

After a pretty even overtime period, the two teams went back and forth during the shootout session with Vrbata and Lee Stempniak scoring for Phoenix and Jordan Eberle and young phenom Taylor Hall scoring for Edmonton.  After a big save by Ilya Bryzgalov on Sam Gagner, Eric Belanger scored on a beautiful top shelf goal against Dubnyk to win it for the Coyotes.

The Coyotes will have Saturday off before they play Vancouver to close out their three-game road trip.  The puck will drop at 7 p.m. Arizona time.

Player of the game: This was a tough choice here, but I had to go with Ray Whitney.  Even though he didn’t get a puck into the net, Whitney had three huge assists.  After struggling to start off the year, it appears as though he is back on track to his normal career numbers.  Vrbata was right behind Whitney for these honors.