Against a banged up team in the Dallas Stars, who were misssing nine (Nine?!) starters, our Phoenix Coyotes managed to pull out a win in overtime. The whole game, on both sides, wasn't very pretty. There were some nice goals scored and bad reffing against both teams, but the defenses on both sides were all over the place, and not in a good way. Dallas was dressing mostly AHLers and we were dressing Jovo. Klee, Kalinen and Sauer looked a little off their games last night too as our D was consistantly out of position. The weak play on D is pretty much the entire reason that Dallas got back into this game. Here's the period by period breakdown...

First Period

The scoring would start early as Brendan Morrison put one over the shoulder of Ilya Bryzgalov on the Stars first shot of the game. Bryz dropped down waaaay to early and Morrison made it look easy. This was not going to be a low scoring game. The game started getting sloppy for the Stars though as the minor penalties were coming all over against them. At 7:54 of the first the Coyotes actually scored a power play goal when Matthew Lombardi worked the puck into the middle and dished off to Scottie Upshall at the side of the net, who had all day to stuff the pck into an open net. Enver Lisin continued the scorring on a flukey goal . He broke away from the stars players and came in hard to the net, but Nicklas Grossman was hanging on him and poked the puck off his stick but redirected it right past Tobias Stephan. Not a bad first period, but both teams were off their games. The D looked shakey on both ends which is how the Coyotes look often times this season, and the Stars looked like they were in the AHL because well, most of them usually are. The Tenders looked off too which I expected from Stephan as he rarely sees ice time behind Turco but not from Bryz who couldn't buy any luck, but was also mistiming his drops.

Second Period

Dallas tied it back up early in the period when Andrew Hutchinson redirected on towards the Net. Zbynek Michalek tried to glove save it for Bryz and it ended up deflecting off of him and bounced right behind Ilya and in. Right off the insuing faceoff, Brandon Prust and Steve Begin dropped them. This wasn't so much a fight as them rolling around on the ice trying to get punches in and largely being unsuccessful. Shane Doan would put the Coyotes ahead again just seconds later when he blasted one from the top of the circles. It looked like Jancevski caught a piece of it, but either way it found the back of the net and Stephan's night wasn't getting any better. 3 minutes later Viktor Tikhonov and Enver Lisin would put the Coyotes up 4-2 as Marty Hanzal's checking was able to keep the puck in the zone, he dished to Tikhonov and the Dallas coverage was not getting back very quickly so he passed to Lisin, who was camped out in front, and put it right past Stephan for his second of the night. Dallas would get back into things though when Brendan Morrison took a shot from the point and Loui Eriksson deflected it up and past Bryzgalov. 4-3 Coyotes.

Third Period

At the beginning of the period it looked like it was going to be all Coyotes. They were keeping in the offensive zone and everything was going well. With 8 minutes remaining Upshall got his second of the night on a hard snap shot from the top of the left circle. Stephan just looked surprised that anyone was shooting and the Coyotes went up 5-3 and looked like they had this one on ice. The Stars would mount the comeback though as at the 14:34 mark somehow the Defense just let Chris Conner skate right past them it recieve a stretch pass at the red line and just made the D and Bryz look silly. Good goal by him and god-awful defense by our guys. 5-4 Coyotes. Stephan came off for the extra attacker with about 1:30 left. Dallas did a good job of puting pressure on the Coyotes and keeping the puck in. With just under a minute to play Daryll Sydor got a nice pass from Matt Niskanen and drilled on from the point and through traffic to get past Bryzgalov and force overtime.

Overtime

Overtime did not last long. With the Coyotes putting on some pressure to start the extra period, Andrew Hutchinson got called for a tripping penalty only 37 seconds into the period. 4-3 the power play actually looked good for a change and cycled the puck through. The passing pulled the D out of position and Doan quickly found Petr Prucha at the side of the net and he stuffed it past Stephan in a mirror image of the earlier Upshall goal.