In Toronto, the Arizona Coyotes’ Shayne Gostisbehere hit for a power play goal with 87 seconds left in the third period to snap a 2-2 tie with the Maple Leafs en route to a 4-2 win on Monday night.
“It was just a breakdown, and I knew Keller was going to pass it to me,” Gostisbehere said. “It was just a matter of when he froze that goalie enough for me to slide it in.
“We know the perception of our team outside this rink. We’re not the traditional hockey market, and we know there’s a bunch of stuff going on with our rink, and we’re obviously in a rebuild, but we’re coming in here to play every night. I told our team on our team-bonding trip, ‘Who cares about the noise? What matters is the guys in this locker room, and we can get better every day and surprise some teams some nights.’ It didn’t look like we were tanking out there tonight if you ask me.”
Karel Vejmelka made 26 saves for the Coyotes first win of the season after two losses.
“Pressure, I think that’s the big thing,” Coyotes forward Christian Fischer said. “In the third period, you give [Auston] Matthews, [Mitchell] Marner, [William] Nylander, I could go on and on, you give those guys space, they’re going to kill you. They’re going to make plays and score goals. Then you start chasing them and drag them down [and they] get some power plays. You don’t want to go against that power play too many times. A lot of lessons to be learned. I think the best thing we did was put pressure on them, and that’s exactly what we didn’t do in the third and it almost cost us.”
Lawson Crouse sealed the win for Arizona with an empty net goal for the 4-2 final.
Mitchell] Marner and William] Nylander were the Maple Leafs strikers.
“Inconsistent,” Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly said. “Early on there was times where we had the puck a lot, and about halfway through the game we kind of went into a lull and we didn’t have much going on and they controlled the play for the most part, and then we seemed to find our game again. If you look at the first period, we had the puck a lot, (but) we didn’t generate a ton from the interior.”
The Coyotes took a 1-0 lead with 26 seconds left in the first period off a power play goal from Nick Ritchie.
“We competed hard, and we scored a big [go-ahead] goal,” Arizona coach Andre Tourigny said. “When you’re under pressure like that and you lose the momentum, it can be tough mentally, and our guys were resilient. Really happy about the way it happened on the bench. We had leadership, guys who stood up and talked, so that was good.”
Fischer pushed the lead to 2-0 in the middle frame.
Toronto rallied to tie the game in the third period before the Coyotes recovered for the win.
“Special teams obviously an issue, and I thought as the game went on, they gained confidence and our team got frustrated and lost its way,” Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said.
“We didn’t adapt, we didn’t score [on] special teams. It’s an area to improve, a lot of areas to improve, and we’re only four games in. Our best people have not found their rhythm. The difference between us and Arizona is we have elite players. Our elite players didn’t play like elite players today, couldn’t make a difference, so in that sense, the game is going to be close.”
Erik Kallgren made 15 saves in the loss after being called up frm the Marlies in the American Hockey League.
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