In Tempe, the promising start to the Coyotes’ season has been spiraling down for weeks.
On Wednesday night, they lost their seventh straight match, this time, 3-1, to the Minnesota Wild.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 25 saves in the Wild win.
“We’re playing good, everything is good. We had the puck and we had a lot of chances,” Fleury said. “We stuck with it. Nobody changed the way. We played it always the same way.”
Minnesota improved to 25-23-5 off their fourth straight win.
The wild took a 1-0 lead when Joel Eriksson Ek hit off the power play at 14:01 of the opening stanza.
Jonas Brodin pushed the lead to 2-0 when he added a marker at 19:39 of the middle frame.
“It’s just nice to win, that’s the biggest thing,” the Wild’s Matt Boldy said. “We’ve got 20 guys playing together, the goalies are playing great, the ‘D’ is awesome, and we’re scoring goals. So, we’ve got to keep it going.”
The Coyotes dropped to 23-25-4.
“I would have loved us to put more pucks on the net,” Arizona coach Andre Tourigny said. “We held onto it a little bit. We were trying for the perfect play, which did not happen because they were playing well defensively.”
Logan Cooley was the lone striker for Arizona.
Cooley trimmed the deficit to 2-1 at 5:21 of the third period.
“It was pretty cool. [Fleury] is a Hall of Fame goalie, and growing up in Pittsburgh, I watched him a lot,” Cooley said. “I just tried to get a shot on net, and fortunately it went in, but it’s still a loss.”
Boldy pushed the Wild lead back to two goals when he struck at 11:04 of the third.
“It was kind of a lucky bounce more than anything, just kind of rolled through him,” Boldy said. “I’m not really totally sure how it went by him, but there’s no pictures on the score sheet. They all count.”
Connor Ingram got the start for the Coyotes, and made 28 saves through 40 minutes minutes of play. He did not ice the third period for an disclosed injury.
Karel Vejmelka made 12 saves, yielding one goal in relief.
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