In Glendale, the Arizona Coyotes shrugged off a listless start to their game with the Tampa Bay Lightning and scored late and often in a 7-3 win Saturday night.
“They get it to 3-3 and everybody gets down, but the response was big, and everybody got his juice back again,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said.
Clayton Keller had two goals in the Coyotes win over the Bolts – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Conor Garland and Clayton Keller struck for two goals each in the win.
“I think we knew how big this game was,” Garland said. “Obviously we weren’t thrilled with our game in St. Louis when we let [Raanta] hang out to dry, and we kind of rallied as a group. … I think a lot of guys were feeling it tonight.”
Antti Raanta made 27 saves to get the victory.
“You try to find every weakness (in a goalie),” Keller said. “Every game there’s clips of their goalie and the recent goals that he’s given up, so I’m definitely going to be watching.”
Anthony Cirelli, Ondrej Palat and Brayden Point were the Lightning strikers.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “We’re a much better team than that. We have a system, it’s worked well the last three months, and we’ve got to be better at it.”
Carl Soderberg and Derek Stepan scored for Arizona, and  Brad Richardson scored would be the wining goal to give the Coyotes a 4-3 lead.
“We kept pressing in the third period and we didn’t back up, and that’s the way you win in this League,” Tocchet said. “When Tampa comes into town, you’re on guard because you don’t want to be embarrassed, and I felt we stuck with the game plan. When we stick to the game plan, we can be a good team.”
[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Coyotes highlights]
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 34 saves in the loss.
“Maybe we were too accepting of the (Vegas) loss,” Tampa Bay forward Pat Maroon said. “Maybe this was just bound to happen. But we can’t get too down on ourselves. It’s a game where you burn the tape and move on.”
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