Coyotes Fall To Bruins 5-2

After Thursday nights 4-0 loss to the Kings, the Arizona Coyotes made some changes, and hoped for the best going into the game against the struggling Boston Bruins.

Unfortunately, their best efforts were not awarded with a win, as the Big Bad Bruins came out on top 5-2, making their home losing streak a new franchise record at seven in a row.

Seeing The Same Struggles

It seems as though the team is showcasing the same struggles every game: offense and goaltending. All season long, this has been their recurring nightmare.

The team isn’t producing or “executing” offensively as Coach Dave Tippett has brought up so many times. They’re being outshot due to the fact that the game is being played in their defensive zone a whole lot more than their offensive zone.

The turnovers are also out of control at this point. Opposing teams are just being handed opportunities and cashing in on them. The Coyotes are creating chances to be scored on, and it is getting them farther and farther from catching up to the lead.

For the second game in a row, there was a change in goaltenders during the second period. Mike Smith was doing the replacing this time, after four goals on starting goalie Devan Dubnyk. Smith let in one in the third period on the Bruins power play, but other than that, he held strong. This is the second time in two games that the team has made the switch between goalies, “If one of them [the goalies] wants to take the ball and run with it and win a bunch of games,” said Tippett. “I’m all good with that.”

Playing a team like Boston is tough, especially considering the quality of their offense. They play a faster game than Arizona, and they have those supserstar forwards that the Coyotes are lacking. Compare the depths of the offense of the two teams, and they are on different spectrums.

Going into the game, they knew it would be tough. Boston didn’t want to go home from their road trip empty-handed, getting a win was a top priority. Playing against an angry team like that is undoubtedly a challenge, and when you don’t have a team that can play up to it, either offensively or defensively, then you’re in trouble.

Though the score might reflect something different, the players feel that the effort that they put out there was getting closer to the way that they need to continue to play. Again, the aforementioned mentality of the team was brought up post game, and defenseman Keith Yandle commented on it saying, “I thought especially compared to last game, we came into this with a good mindset…..I thought our mindset was where it needed to be at and we just weren’t able to get it.”

Talking about the way the team played, starting goaltender Devan Dubnyk said that he “thought our effort was there” in the game, but unfortunately they just couldn’t get it.

One improvement is that the Coyotes finally scored at home after 185:34 minutes of being scoreless. They were able to muster up some offense to get themselves on the board, but not enough to win. Coach Tippett said there’s “not much solace” in giving up five goals, even if you do “score a couple goals” to get yourself in the game.

“This whole string has been tough to chew on.”- Dave Tippett

Bruins Get The Win

Now on the other side of things, you have the Boston Bruins. Going into the game, the Bruins were 0-3 on their West Coast road trip. A struggling team plagued by injuries was coming into the game against the ‘Yotes, and were hungry to win, and that’s just what they did.

“Yeah we definitely didn’t want to go home without getting the win on this road trip and you could tell the guys were desperate,” said forward Brad Marchand, who tallied two goals in the teams victory. “We played really good right from the get-go and everyone was buying in and doing what we had to do. We’re going to be happy with this but hopefully we can keep building on it.”

Goaltender Tuukka Rask, who has had a “weird year” spoke more about the teams efforts, saying, “We scored 5 goals which helps obviously but I thought we really played a solid 60 minutes.” Playing through the full game has been a downfall of theirs, and they’ve allowed many leads to slip away just by not pushing through the whole length of the game.

Coming Up

The Coyotes take on the Nashville Predators at home on December 11th after a 5 day break from games. The Coyotes played Nashville at Nashville and lost 4-3 in a shootout back in October. With the Preds being hot this season, how will the struggling Coyotes prepare to face off?