It’s hard to score when you don’t shoot the puck. Countless times I found myself yelling at my flat screen TV to “SHOOT the puck!”Luckily Shane Doan and Mike Smith did enough to avoid a Power Outage in Colorado.
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Shane Doan opened the scoring for the road warriors with a goal similar to the playoff backhand and that concluded a tightly played opening period. It also featured a bizarre situation where both Kyle Chupacabra and Paul Biznasty both dropped the gloves but the linesman tol Paul and his dance partner they had to wait their turn which they did. After the score was tied by a wicked knuckler by Matt Duchene Biz had his chance and although it appeared he did not have a proper hold he threw a few hay makers and sent his man to the ice.
Matt Duchene gave Colorado a 2 – 1 lead that lasted the duration of the 2nd period and a majority of the 3rd. Then Ollie the Trolly tied the score up at 2 – 2 with a nice shot from distance that would tighten things up once again for the rest of the 3rd period. The story of this game was the 0 – 5 on the power play including a 5 on 3 advantage. Coyotes flawed strategy was pass, pass, pass, pass, turnover. Rinse and repeat several times. Also lapses caused several penalties including one with only 2 minutes in the game. Mike Smith shook off a tough 2nd period to be stellar for most of the game including flurries sent by the Avalanche which lived up to their name. A key face off won by Gordon ended the power play but seconds later David Moss was called for holding in their zone and a nice little flop was not called. Yandle was called for a dive and Sullivan a misconduct for running his mouth.
Heading to overtime Colorado still had a now 4 on 3 power play with over a minute left but at this point the Coyotes wanted more but were happy with getting a hard fought point. The Dawgs were able to escape the shooting gallery and with some momentum nearly ended the game with some nice shots from Morris and company. After some cautious play it seemed we would be heading to a shootout but after some tenacious activity a loose puck off a linesmen gathered by Chipchura was sent to Captain Coyote and Shane Doan buried the game winner. 3-2 Phoenix in the extra session and another huge 2 points on the road and a total of 4 of the possible 4 on this road trip.
Kudos to Doan but let’s not forget the flurry of shots Smitty stopped to make this possible. 41 saves on 43 shots in altitude. Was it the best game of the season? Hardly. It was Coyote Ugly and we’ll take it.