In St Louis on Tuesday night, Darcy Kuemper made 39 saves to help the Arizona Coyotes to a 3-1 win over the St Louis Blues.
The win pushed the Coyotes into the second wild card spot in the Western Conference.
Richard Panik, Vinnie Hinostroza and Oliver Ekman-Larsson provided the offense for Arizona.
Vinnie Hinostroza had a goal for Coyotes in win – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“Especially with the year we’ve had so far with a lot of injuries, we’ve battled really hard to get to where we are right now and hopefully we can keep going and stay in that wild card spot,” Ekman-Larsson said. “That’s what we’re focused on right now. We don’t look at the other teams. We need to focus on what we have to do.”
The Coyotes improved to 35-30-5.
“Our whole identity is working hard,” Hinostroza said. “We got the puck in deep there. [Michael Grabner] went to work and [Brad Richardson] tried to shoot it. The puck just laid there for me and I just shot it in.”
Arizona lost Monday night, 7-1, to the Blackhawks in Chicago.
“This morning we had our meeting and I could tell guys were serious,” Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet said. “We all didn’t like the game (Monday), but the one thing this team does is it bounces back. We had a bend but don’t break defense today. St. Louis was coming at us pretty hard, but I thought we did a pretty nice job of getting in lanes and playing half decent positional hockey.”
The Blues are 2-3-1 in their last six and they hold a slim two-point lead over the Dallas Stars for third place in the Central.
Jaden Schwartz scored the lone Blues goal.
“It’s embarrassing. It (stinks),” Blues center Ryan O’Reilly said. “It’s a game we should have won. There’s no way those guys should have beat us. I was shooting the puck terrible tonight (five shots on goal, 10 attempts). I had lots of opportunities where I could have done something. That was embarrassing. That was a game we should have beat those guys.”
[WATCH: All Coyotes vs. Blues highlights]
Jordan Binnington made 19 saves in the loss.
“We played well, we outshot them, played well. But again, we can say we had zone time, but we’ve just got to find ways to score goals. One goal, 6-on-5, or just on the power play isn’t good enough right now. We’ve got to find a way to score,” Alex Pietrangelo said after the loss.
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