The Arizona Coyotes still struggling to play sixty minutes, but Tobias Rieder is pretty good
A busy week in in the desert!
The team finished off the week 1-2-1; better than Edmonton, but not very good when you actually think about it. Luckily, there were plenty of good things to talk about, in among the bad. Here’s what you missed this week:
Last Week’s Games:
Arizona Coyotes vs Washington Capitals
Date: Tuesday, November 18th
Final Score: Capitals 2 – 1 Coyotes (OT)
This was one of the closest games the Coyotes have played all season — and much like the other close game this week, it was one of the most exciting, as well. The team looked good together; for maybe the first game all season, the team played their own game instead of trying to match their play to the opponent’s. The two teams traded off spurts of shots, but it seemed like this game was going to a shootout until a lucky goal by Washington robbed the Coyotes of a possible second point.
Read the full game recap here.
Arizona Coyotes vs Dallas Stars
Date: Thursday, November 20th
Final Score: Stars 3 – 1 Coyotes
Maybe the most painful game any Coyotes fan has ever witnessed — although there were a surprising number of these desert dog supporters at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Nice to see fans from a non-traditional market sticking with their team in another non-traditional market… means good things for the Coyotes and the Stars alike.
This was the second consecutive loss to the Stars that the Coyotes have endured due to sheer laziness on their part. A bad bounce off the first puck drop in the third period gave the Stars the opportunity to tie up the one-goal lead the Coyotes had held all game, but the lack of scorepower by the Coyotes — combined with a complete drop-off in Arizona’s production as a whole — gave what looked like an extremely sloppy Dallas roster a pretty easy win.
Read the full recap here.
Arizona Coyotes vs San Jose Sharks
Date: Saturday, November 22nd
Final Score: Coyotes 4 – 3 Sharks (OTSO)
The Sharks have been struggling through November, but this win doesn’t just get credited to bad play by San Jose. The Coyotes held it down with some award-winning defensive play to not only open up the scoring but fend off the Sharks long enough to bring it to a shootout, despite getting outshot 43-25 over the course of the game.
The shootout win was as much due to Antoine Vermette‘s nice breakaway shot as it was to the poor shooting by San Jose, but the Coyotes will absolutely take it.
Read the full recap here.
Arizona Coyotes vs Anaheim Ducks
Date: Sunday, November 23rd
Final Score: Ducks 2 – 1 Coyotes
It’s amazing that the Coyotes even came within a point of the Ducks in this game; the team got outshot by nearly triple in the first two periods, and a couple last-minute goals by Anaheim at the end of the second period looked like they’d be the last goals scored all game.
The Coyotes were determined not to get shut out, though, and surged back in the third period to narrow the victory margin by a single goal. A seventeen-SOG rally by the Desert Dogs almost brought this game into overtime, as well. Had the Coyotes put in this effort all game, things might have ended differently.
Read the full recap here.
Around the league:
Puck Prose
- The Edmonton Oilers extended their losing streak to six, falling to the Chicago Blackhawks 7-1 in the final game to push their fans over the edge. The team got booed out of the building, and rumors of an administration change lit up the internet for the rest of the weekend. Nothing’s changed, though — and probably neither will their standing in the league.
- In a baffling move, the San Jose Sharks swapped puck-moving blue liner Jason Demers and a draft pick for Brenden Dillon of the Dallas Stars. Nothing wrong with Dillon as a player, but the pick — combined with the nearly thirty-five percent of Demers’ salary that San Jose will retain as a part of the deal — seems like too high an asking price for the former Stars defenseman. This was the third blue line transaction Dallas has made this season alone.
- The league has all but forgotten the drama surrounding teams like Arizona and Florida (and, for that matter, this hypothetical Las Vegas team) in light of the drama unfolding in Toronto. The Maple Leafs went on a two-game losing streak in which they got outscored 15-4, but the league was far more focused on the behavior of the players and the fans. Phil Kessel snarled at the media, fans threw more jerseys on the ice (and threatened goaltender April Reimer’s wife on Twitter), then the Leafs chose not to salute the crowd when they finally won a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2.
Keep checking back with us this week for more news, opinions, and analysis about the Arizona Coyotes!
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