As the lights came up on Gila River Arena, home of the Arizona Coyotes, my six-year-old son saw the Coyotes logo at centre ice and immediately perked up.
“Oh, the Coyotes!” he said. “The Coyotes are bad. The Canucks are bad. So it’s bad versus bad!”
That is an accurate assessment. I didn’t have a chance to do a game day preview for this one, but really, that should have been it. I can’t account for how excited he was about it, but, to quote another great hockey mind, “It is what it is.”
It’s true, a match-up of the 28th and 31st place teams in the NHL is bad versus bad and didn’t hold much promise for entertainment. But the Coyotes and Canucks at least provided one-third of an entertaining game. Unfortunately, I watched three-thirds of this game.
- It was hard to avoid a certain “here we go again” feeling when the Coyotes dominated the opening shift and Nick Cousins put the puck into the net 43 seconds into the game. But the most bizarre thing happened: the goal was waved off and the Canucks went on the power play instead. It was something called “goaltender interference,” which must be a rule the referees just made up on the spot. You’re telling me that when a player runs into a goaltender as the puck goes into the net, they can call an actual penalty? Since when?
- I’m being facetious, but it has become increasingly comical how little goaltender interference gets called as an actual penalty now that it’s become reviewable on a goal. It’s like the NHL says, “You got the goal called back; don’t get greedy.” The Canucks made the most of their reversal of fortune, scoring on the subsequent power play.
- The goal came at the tail end of the two minutes, which explains why Derrick Pouliot, who isn’t normally on either power play unit, was on the ice, so there would be two defencemen on the ice when the power play expired. He suddenly pulled a Christian Ehrhoff and jumped up into the slot, where Henrik Sedin found him with a patented spinning blind backhand pass off the boards. The left-handed Pouliot didn’t have the right angle for a one-timer, so he redirected the puck down low to Daniel Sedin, who finished with far more authority than was strictly necessary. That goal required Jack Hawksmoor at most, but he showed up with Apollo, The Midnighter, and Jenny Sparks. Complete overkill.
- The disallowed goal must have been like a cortisone shot to the mind of Jacob Markstrom. Instead of giving up a goal on the first shot of the game, Markstrom was suddenly gifted an early lead to protect, and he settled in and became nigh-unbeatable. Sure, it was the Coyotes, the lowest-scoring team in the league, but they still had their chances and Markstrom turned them aside like Cyndi Lauper: time after time.
- Max Domi sent a clear message when he crosschecked Brock Boeser in the back away from the puck: “I hate you, don’t trade for me.” Or maybe he was saying, “Trade for me so I do this to opponents and not your star player.” Maybe the message wasn’t as clear as I thought.
- What a weird game for Ben Hutton. Normally he fails the eye test in the defensive zone, but passes the numbers test; against the Coyotes, he passed the eye test and failed the numbers test. He had one eye-catching sequence in the first period when he won a puck battle down low against two Coyotes, then beat another to a loose puck and sent a breakout pass up to Brock Boeser. But the Canucks got out-shot 16-2 when he was on the ice at 5-on-5, and if you go back, you can see just how much time he spent trapped in the defensive zone. If Hutton ends up getting traded, this was a pretty lousy way for him to leave Vancouver.
- Someday Alex Edler will form a road hockey team with Alex Burrows, and Edler will be goalie, finally fulfilling his lifelong dream. You could see it in his perfect form on the Coyotes’ lone goal, kicking out his left leg and throwing his left arm up in perfect synchronicity with Markstrom behind him. Unfortunately, because they mirrored each other so exactly, there was the same amount of space for Alex Goligoski to shoot at, potting the rebound upstairs like a houseplant.
- With Thomas Vanek out of the lineup to avoid a potential last-minute injury heading into the trade deadline, Nic Dowd took his spot on the Sedins’ wing, while Jake Virtanen stepped in on the second power play unit. Dowd played just four minutes, but Virtanen looked pretty good with the man advantage. Giving someone whose main skill is speed a little more room on the ice and there’s some potential for good things to happen.
- Travis Green obviously wasn’t thrilled about the idea of Dowd on the Sedins’ wing (unlike Willie Desjardins, who would have embraced it and turned it into a month-long experiment), so he rotated wingers on their line. Brock Boeser, Jake Virtanen, and Loui Eriksson all got a turn, with Boeser getting the best result: a goal.
- Troy Stecher played a key role in the goal, pinching down the boards to cut off a clearing attempt. Boeser, dutifully covering Stecher at the point (details!), whipped the loose puck towards the goal, where Daniel Sedin, like errybody in the club, was gettin’ tipsy, tipping Boeser’s shot past Darcy “Mr. Darcy” Kuemper.
- Darren Archibald is the perfect example for something I’ve been saying for years: don’t spend money on the fourth line. Archibald has been the quintessential fourth-line winger since signing his league-minimum $650,000 per year contract earlier this month. He hits. He fights. He kills penalties. And, sometimes, he scores goals. Don’t waste millions of dollars when guys like Archibald are available for cheap in the AHL.
- It was a great heads-up play by Stecher on the 3-1 goal. He picked up a botched pass on the penalty kill and, instead of quickly clearing it, kept his head up and noticed Clayton Keller was standing still at the point instead of backing up into the neutral zone as a defenceman likely would. That enabled him to spring Sutter and Archibald on a 2-on-1. Like Ben Grimm to Alicia Masters, Sutter’s saucer pass was a thing of beauty, and Archibald one-timed it into the back of the net.
- Early in the season, Travis Green was constantly matching people up like Emma Woodhouse. He appears to have eased up of late. The Coyotes leading scorers are Clayton Keller and Derek Stepan, but the Sutter line didn’t face either of them; Baertschi, Gagner, and Virtanen played the most against Keller and the Sedins played the most against Stepan. It’s an interesting development and, to be honest, I don’t have the foggiest clue what it means.
