Arizona Coyotes Listless Effort Results in Loss to Wild

The Arizona Coyotes showed little heart in competing with the fired up Minnesota Wild on Friday night, and the results are disturbing.

As anticipated, the Minnesota Wild came to Gila River Arena with fire in their bellies intending to beat the Arizona Coyotes. Their recent losses to the Vegas Golden Knights didn’t sit well, and they knew that they could only put those losses in the rear view mirror by beating the ripe for the pickin’ Arizona Coyotes.

It was a beautiful day in Glendale, Arizona on Friday, a perfect setting for the Coyotes to win the first of two back-to-back games against the road weary Minnesota Wild inside Gila River Arena.

Well those pesky Wild men flipped the script on the Yotes and embarrassed them 5 to 1. Truth be told, the game was over when the score was 3 to 0 at the end of the first period. The most exciting thing to look forward to at that point may have been to see if the Coyotes would score a goal in the third period so that we could all replace the sour tastes in our mouths with three free seasoned crunchy beef tacos on Saturday.

The Coyotes performance was both disappointing and disturbing. We  don’t ever really know what to expect on any given day from those confounding Desert Dogs. Look up the word “inconsistent” in a dictionary and it might include a photo of the Arizona Coyotes!

The lone goal was scored by Clayton Keller on a nifty pass from Jordan Oesterle, so free tacos are in order. Mission accomplished, hungry Yotes fans.

Oesterle was one of a few Coyotes noticeable on the ice for playing like he wanted to win, although he coughed up the puck late and the Wild scored its fifth goal of the game.

So what do we make of these Coyotes, fellow faithful? Too little offense, too few quality shots on one end, and too many mental and coverage mistakes on the other.

Do we dare expect a rebound effort of epic proportions on Saturday, or more of the uninspired variety of play? Are the Colorado Avalanche already in the heads of our Coyotes when they should be “smack-dab” focused on beating Minnesota tonight?

Let’s see how the Coyotes respond to the physical and mental beat down imposed upon them by the motivated and confident Wild. They’ve always had difficulty beating Minnesota, but it doesn’t mean they can’t. Unless they don’t have the heart to. Then it’s already over. Let’s go Coyotes!