Arizona Coyotes to Host Nemesis Minnesota Wild in 2-Game Set
The fourth place Arizona Coyotes (20-20-5 45 points) face the third place Minnesota Wild (27-13-3 57 points) tonight and Wednesday night at Gila River Arena, and that isn’t necessarily good news. The Yotes have won only once out of 6 tries against Minnesota this season, so now is the perfect time to turn that trend around and grab at least two of the possible four points from the Wild this week.
The Desert Dogs will desperately need to play a tight, consistent game on defense and then transition as a group into the Wild’s “D” zone and forecheck for sixty minutes if they have any hopes to beat the confident boys from the State of Hockey. The Wild is on a three-game winning streak and have a powerful, multifaceted attack led by sensational rookie Kirill Kaprizov. By winning on Saturday, the Coyotes have now “won 1 in a row” and are 4 and 6 in their last ten games.
It’s a distinct advantage to the home team to have a healthy Darcy Kuemper back in goal. It solidifies the defense and gives those folks in front of him a great deal of confidence. But goalkeepers don’t score goals to impact games very often, so it’s incumbent upon the skaters to contribute to the cause. Michael Bunting has been on fire lately and a breath of fresh air for the all-too-pathetic Coyotes offense. He’s scored 7 goals in 10 games. On the opposite end of the ledger, Christian Fischer has played in 41 games and has no goaIs.
If the guys in between them (like Garland, Keller, Schmaltz, and Kessel) can increase the number of shots they take that actually are on target and require some response from the opposing netminder, maybe rebounds and second chances will become available. Neither the Coyotes nor their fans particularly care who scores their goals at this stage, and many believe that Jakob Chychrun is more adept at scoring goals than most of the “O” men are. The exceptions may include Tyler Pitlick, Johan Larsson, and anyone else willing to stand in and around the blue paint and get beat up by the opposition in order to screen the goalkeeper and redirect pucks into the net.
At the very least, Monday night’s game will serve as a gauge to see if the Arizona Coyotes are prepared to compete every night from now on. If the Yotes can not get scored upon early, stay out of the penalty box, and actually score on their own power plays, things could end up okay. Happy hockey night everybody! Let’s go Coyotes!