In Elmont, the New York Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin made 17 saves for his second shutout of the Arizona Coyotes this season.
The Isles bested the Coyotes, 4-0 on Friday night.
“We defended really well,” New York head coach Barry Trotz said. “… [The Coyotes] play a really good brand of hockey. They don’t give you much. They don’t give you odd-man rushes, they defend really well. They’ve got some skill, they can make some plays and they’re dangerous when they go to the net. There’s a lot of good things that Arizona is doing.”
The Coyotes fell to 10-25-4.
“We had breakdowns, which will happen in a game,” Arizona head coach Andre Tourigny said. “They had breakdowns as well, they just capitalized on ours. … I don’t think we played a bad game after two periods, but it was real tough to create offense against them.”
Brock Nelson hit for a double in the win.
Scott Mayfield added a single marker for the Isles.
“We’ve kind of been able to put it together here for a little bit,” Mayfield said. “Things seem like they’re coming together better. We want to be stingy in our end and then push the pace going forward.”
New York improved to 14-13-6.
“I think that’s the style we want to play,” Mayfield said. “When we got in their end, we were able to control the puck. We didn’t give them easy exits coming back in the neutral zone, stuff like that. We did a good job offensively, and that’s sometimes your best defense. But in our zone, I think we played physical, blocked shots and then we were able to exit the zone pretty cleanly.”
Austin Czarnik also scored for the Islanders.
Scott Wedgewood made 31 saves in the Coyotes loss.
“I thought we had a good start to the first period, and then we kind of gave them their offense and they capitalized on it,” the Coyotes’ Dysin Mayo said. “They’re good at playing a trap game, so it was hard to get back into it after that.”
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