Arizona Coyotes hand over 5-3 victory to Calgary Flames

The Arizona Coyotes cannot keep up in 5-3 loss to the Calgary Flames

It was a valiant(ish) effort for the Arizona Coyotes, but they’ll head on to Vancouver tomorrow with yet another loss in the books.

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The Calgary Flames picked up their tenth win of the season Thursday night, re-establishing their lead twice over the course of the game before ultimately ending with a 5-3 victory at the ScotiaBank Saddledome. They’re third in the Pacific Division, with one of the most stellar netminders and some of the hottest young talent in the league heading into the winter months.

The game started out in favor of the Flames, with Paul Byron picking up his first of two goals halfway through the first period. The Coyotes managed to tie it up shortly afterwards, when Captain Coyote himself put one past Jonas Hiller with four minutes left in the first; this early comeback would fail to foreshadow progressive dominance, though, as the Arizona skaters spent the entire game playing catch-up against their division rivals.

The Flames opened up the second period with two unanswered goals two and six minutes in, 0nly to allow the Coyotes to catch up minutes later with a power play goal from Antoine Vermette and a nifty wrister from off-season find Joe Vitale.

Although the Coyotes would spend large chunks of the final twenty minutes dominating possession, though, the Calgary Flames regained their two-goal lead before the game’s end with a goal from Flames captain Mark Giordano and an unassisted shot by David Jones. The Coyotes broke their one-goal loss streak, and the Flames went home happy.

Although the Coyotes had plenty of nice plays, the team was grievously bad at puck possession. The third period was full of turnovers by the Flames, and the Coyotes spent too much time chasing down their own giveaways.

The team saw great movement from Keith Yandle and Connor Murphy together, although this pairing was responsible for a larger number of those turnovers than they should care to admit. Tobias Rieder and Sam Gagner looked nice as well, with Joe Vitale rounding off the game stars list for yet another full game of hustle.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson looked good, but was left stranded by what looked to be a struggling Zbynek Michalek, while Mikkel Boedker played his fastest game yet- but fell far behind in possession with too many turnovers to count.

The team heads to Vancouver Friday night, for their second of a back-to-back roadtrip series.

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