Ground meet Coyotes, Coyotes meet ground.
Such was the introduction on Monday night for the Arizona Coyotes as they fell back to earth in a 7-1 rout at the hands of the Blackhawks in Chicago.
With the Minnesota Wild losing on Monday to the San Jose Sharks, the Coyotes missed a chance to claim the second wild card spot in the Western Conference.
On Monday, Brendan Perlini scored his first career NHL hat trick to power the Hawks to the win.
“It’s obviously great,” said Perlini, who played 153 games for the Coyotes from 2016-18. “I just wanted to get the win in general, but to do that was awesome. I’ll never forget that one.”
In a bit of a face-wash move, he finished his hat trick with four seconds left.
“He’s skating, he’s really involved,” Blackhawks head coach Jeremy Colliton said. “He’s winning races and puck battles, and then the offensive side of his game has the opportunity to come through. Really happy for him. Obviously, it was a big night for him, playing against his old team.”
Brandon Saad, Chris Kunitz, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews also scored for Chicago who improved to 30-30-9.
“Yeah, it’s exciting,” Saad said. “After last game, we felt good. It’s nice to get a character win like that in an away barn (2-1 win at the Dallas Stars on Saturday) and be able to buckle down defensively. We haven’t done that in a while. And tonight, we made some more plays and scored more goals, but I think defensively we played really well.”
Corey Crawford made 24 saves for the win to push the Blackhawks within five points of the second wild card spot in the west.
“It’s huge. We still know we’re right there,” Perlini said. “This year it’s been like really in and out as far as a couple games go by and some teams are in it, then some teams are out of it. We know that we’re still right there. As long as we keep putting good games together and wins together, we’ll be around.”
Richard Panik scored the Coyotes’ only goal.
“We just had too many guys that had bad, like terrible nights. It’s on me, I didn’t get these guys prepared,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said. “I don’t know, maybe we should have done something differently yesterday (at practice), but I’m going to take the bullet on this one because I think that maybe I could have done something different. Some guys were just, they weren’t ready to play.”
[WATCH: Coyotes vs. Blackhawks highlights]
Darcy Kuemper, made 12 saves before being given the hook in the second period; he surrendered four goals.
Calvin Pickard made 15 saves after relieving Kuemper.
“It’s part of being a goalie,” Pickard said. “You’re going to have to be called upon at different times in a game. Obviously, loud building, they were buzzing pretty good up 4-1, got to step right from the dressing room and step right up into the game.
“Give them credit, they were unbelievable, they were making plays, they were the [Harlem] Globetrotters for a while and they earned some good goals. It’s just one game for us, the nice part about it is we can bounce back tomorrow (against the St. Louis Blues).”
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