Arizona Coyotes Defeat Philadelphia Flyers at Gila River Arena, Lose Raanta

The Coyotes won their third straight game at home 6 to 2 on Saturday night, but lost Antti Raanta in the process.

The high-powered offense of the Philadelphia Flyers made their only appearance of the season at Gila River Arena on Saturday night, and the Coyotes defense was able to shut them down enroute to an impressive victory.

Travis Konecny, Jakub Voracek, Claude Giroux, and Sean Couturier have all lit the lamp frequently for the Flyers this season, but their defensive corp has recently given up bunches of goals that have essentially resulted in neutralizing their own attackers’ potent offense. In 3 of the past 4 games, the Flyers have allowed 6 goals once and 5 goals twice. The 5-goal games were their past two games, one in Los Angeles and the other in Las Vegas.

The trend continued on Saturday night at GRA, as the Coyotes were able to score three goals in the first period against the snake-bitten Flyers. The ‘Yotes primarily played a disciplined game, and the blue liners in particular weren’t giving much room to the ever dangerous Philadelphia big guns.

The second period was played a bit sloppily by the Coyotes and it appeared as if they lost their concentration for a while. The Flyers were the ones skating on their front feet for the first part of the period. The desert dogs committed a couple of penalties in the that period, but due to some aggressive defense and stalwart goalkeeping, no harm was done and the Coyotes scored with literally only tenths of a second on the clock.

The Coyotes started the final stanza up 4 to 0, and they anticipated that the proud Flyers would take the game to the home town boys to at least erase the zero on their side of the scoreboard. What they didn’t expect, however, was Antti Raanta not taking the ice for the beginning of the third period, reportedly due to a lower body injury.

The Flyers scored their first goal on goalkeeper Adin Hill just three minutes into the final frame. Fortunately Clayton Keller got the goal back and the ‘Yotes went up 5 to 1, but the Flyers scored a second time a few minutes later.

The Coyotes beat the Flyers fairly handily, winning the game 6 to 2. Their biggest concern following their impressive victory, however, was the loss of starting goalkeeper Annti Raanta to injury. Adin Hill replaced Raanta and played well enough to secure the win.

Time will tell who will be net minding for the Coyotes as they head to the east coast to play both of the Florida teams and the Carolina Hurricanes before heading back home.

Let’s go Coyotes!