In Sunrise, the hobbled Arizona Coyotes leaned on goalie Adin Hill for 37 saves on Tuesday night in a 5-2 win over the Panthers.
Hill, called up from the Tucson Roadrunners of the American Hockey League was solid in his first start of the season with the NHL club.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson had a goal for the Coyotes om win over Panthers – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“A little bit nervous, but once you get to the rink and you get into your routine before the game, all that kind of disappears and you’re just playing the game you love,” Hill said. “I felt good. I guess I saw a lot of pucks. The guys did a great job locking it down for me for the first game. For my first start of the year, they played a great game, and special teams seemed to be the key to the win.”
Taylor Hall scored once and added an assist in the win.
“These last four games, you’re seeing every line is kind of playing the way that they want to play and a lot of guys are chipping in,” Hall said. “That’s great for the team’s confidence.”
Noel Acciari and Mike Hoffman scored for the Panthers.
“We need to just kind of dig deep here,” Acciari said. “We can’t be going back and forth. We need to string together three, four wins in a row and kind of separate ourselves a little bit from the bottom of our (Atlantic) Division so we can have a little bit of a cushion. But right now it’s not going right for us, but I have faith in this locker room and we all know what we need to do.”
Christian Dvorak, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Carl Soderberg also scored for the Coyotes.
“It was just like a workman kind of game,” Arizona head coach Rick Tocchet said. “Special teams was something that we were really happy with that we won that battle. Florida is a really good team. They pressed a couple of times. We defended really well at the end. There were a lot of guys who contributed tonight.”
Lawson Crouse added an empty net goal to seal the win.
[WATCH: All Coyotes vs. Panthers highlights]
Chris Driedger made 32 saves in the loss.
“A disappointing game,” Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville said. “Even though we’re in decent shape with the lead, I thought we missed that first-period start where we didn’t dictate the tempo or pace of the game. We’re up 2-1 and we give up two quick ones and that changed the whole complexion of the game. In the third we didn’t generate much. We had some decent looks, but you can’t be happy with that.”
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