Damn that Jimmy Howard! Also our Power Play sucks. Now 3 of 17 with the extra man. All three of those conversions came in game 1! WTF Mate? 

Hope you liked that brilliant analysis. Thank goodness Shane Doan should be back in game 5 to check everyone that moves. 

~Fin~

I said earlier , heck everyone said ti, that the Coyotes needed to get back to their style of play and dictate how this game was going to be played. They did it right off the bat and while there was a time that the Coyotes let Detroit pile on the shots, they never controlled the game in really any way.

The Coyotes started of pressing into the Detroit zone off the faceoff and Sami Lepisto scored just :29 seconds in putting in a rebound off of a Petr Prucha shot. Prucha took a shot, got a rebound, shot again and still managed to keep going to generate the chance. It caught Detroit completely off guard and took the crowd out of the game for a large portion of the period. Detroit would tie things up later in the period when Valtteri Filppula wristed in a chance that bounced around and found it's way past Ilya Bryzgalov.  THe Coyotes continued to lock things down defensivly though and it ended 1-1 at the end of the first. 

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Well it wasn't the end to the regular season we were looking for, but once again we came back and played an excellent 3rd period, but lost in the shootout. Rare for us I know. The Closer made a different move than usual and it just didn't work out. Rather than going high glove side he tried to get all fancy with the five hole and got blocked. 

I think this one just gets the bullet points from here on out though to conserve energy for the WHITEOUT!

• How ninja was that Lee Stempniak goal? Fakes out San Jose and just wraps it right around an in past Nabokov. If you haven't seen it, check out the highlights below. That's why we like the guy so much. 
• Lombardi's goal was equally nice with a blast from the slot that surprised everyone. 
• We really need to have the energy that we have in the 3rd period of games lately throughout the entire game in the playoffs. 
• Bryz was solid even though he gave up a couple and a couple in the shootout. Not a bad outing, we just need to be more active on taking shots.
• The refs are ready for the playoffs as they really swallowed their whistles. Only a delay of game on Ilya Bryzgalov when he lifted the puck over the glass and one on Sami Lepisto for holding. At least if that keeps up we don't have to worry about the power play being totally terrible. 
• Dany Heatley - Total Douchebag.
• I hope the Wings fall to 7th so that we get to watch San Jose - Detroit. 
  

That's all I got. Go Hawks' (Valid today only)

Another game, another win in the shootout for the Coyotes. In a game that really didn't matter to them one way or the other, the Coyotes still battled back to take it. While it just adds to that "win too much in the shootout" crap that naysayers like to throw about, to come back in the last ten minutes down 2-0 is nothing to scoff at. Just goes to show how clutch this team can be. To the quick bullet points:

• LaBarbera wasn't bad tonight, the only 2 times he got beat is when the Kings managed to also make the rest of the defense foolish. Practically the same move on both goals, but the D didn't hold the shooters up and bad things happen.
• The Post wasn't our friend tonight with both Shane Doan and Lee Stempniak clanging shots off the iron. 
• The whole first period was a snoozer and fans on twitter and possibly in my house were tuning out a bit as the Coyotes seemed half asleep too. 10 minutes was all our guys needed though. 
• The powerplay continued it's exercises in futility as they went 0 for 5 again tonight. This is getting absolutely brutal, but hopefully it doesn't hurt too badly as the refs start to not want to use the whistles as much in the playoffs. 
• Taylor Pyatt continues his hot streak with a deflected Zbynek Michalek slapshot for a goal.
• Our 4th line was solid as Daniel Winnik - Petteri Nokelainen - Paul Bissonnette controlled play on many of the shifts they had last night. 
• The one fight was kind of weak as Bissonnette and Raitis Ivanans both threw a punch and then promptly fell down. 
• The Kings are now tied with Detroit and Nashville for 2nd place with 98 points. LA and Detroit both have 2 games to play, Nashville only one. 

Christian Petersen - Getty Images

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In a game that we could have just laid down, and in fact some fans were encouraging the team to do so, the Coyotes showed up big in a 5-2 win to clinch the 4th seed in the west and Home Ice Advantage at least in the first round. 

That being said the Coyotes didn't get off to a very good start when Shea Weber ripped one past Ilya Bryzgalov when the Preds won an early offensive zone face off. It was only :12 seconds into the game. What was nice to see though is that the Coyotes didn't sit back and let it get them down they came right back and tied it up on their first shot of the game when Kauri Korpikoski ran away with a Nashville turnover. He just kicked the speed up a notch and just got Pekka Rinne coming out of the net, took a hard left and just tapped in an easy one after making the hard skating play. 

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I'm going to keep this short simply so that I can match the effort level that the Coyotes seemed to put into their game against the Canucks last night. From the drop of the puck things were just terrible. Bryzgalov let in one hell of a soft goal to start things off less than a minute in and then shortly there after the team collectively turned the puck over right in front of the net. 2-0 early. It just got worse and even though we managed to get one goal on a 5 minute power play we just never really had anything going. Ilya Bryzgalov would let another terrible goal in when he passed it right to Henrik Sedin behind the net who just wrapped it around and in. At that point I pretty much blocked the rest of the game out. THey got another goal, but I don't even remember it. It was just brutal.

Once again turnovers were the culprit. It just seemed like anything involving stick handling was a bust. We couldn't skate with the puck. We couldn't pass the puck. We could barely shoot the puck. Roberto Luongo did a good job of stopping the chances we did have, but man. We just looked asleep at the wheel. 

We go into Calgary tonight and better step our game up. Only 5 left to make sure we're ready for the big time. 

It's another late night here at Five for Howling HQ, but man oh man what a game we saw last night. With a playoff berth already in our hands it would have been easy to just phone it in or coast into this game, but we didn't. Everyone though that Colorado would be a team that was hungry for points and would bring their hunger with them in this one. They didn't. Everyone was ready to give Peter Mueller the business too, but he suddenly had a hip injury. Interesting. Basically it turned out really well for us, but it wasn't the game that anyone expected. 

The first period was just a mess. Maybe the ice was bad from getting some things ready for the Paul McCartney concert that's happening Sunday, maybe we were just a little off after having a day off. I'm not sure, but we couldn't pass, skate, or posses the puck hardly at all for a good 15 minutes of the first. That being said we did get the first goal as Derek Morris bounced one right off the tape of Kyle Cumiskey for the first of the night. Our ugly play would continue later as on the power play we just kept turning in over in our own zone and former Coyote Kevin Porter made us pay getting a shorthanded goal as he lifted one into the top stick side of the net. Honestly we were lucky that we got out of that period tied at 1 with how the turnovers were occurring...

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It was a valiant effort, but it wasn't quite enough as the Coyotes fell 4-3 to Nashville in the shoot out. The Coyotes were the first one's on the board as Lee Stempniak got one again as he wristed one past Rinne. It's his 10th goal in a Coyotes sweater. Other than that though, there wasn't much positive to say about the guys as they just kind of floated through the first two periods as the Predators started wracking up the goals. Ilya Bryzgalov played pretty well, but the defense failed to cover the guys it needed to and left a lot of wide open chances out there. 

Patric Horqvist, Steve SUllivan and Dan Hamhuis would all score as the Preds rattled off 3 unanswered. It looked like the Coyotes wouldn't be able to mount much of anything as they continued to play flat in the 3rd. Slowly though the chances started coming and the hard work and nice plays paid off. Keith Yandle made a spinning pass to the stick of Wojtek Wolski who lifted the puck in to close the gap to just one goal. Then Yandle put the next on in himself on a slapshot that just plain beat Rinne. 

The Coyotes nor the Preds could make anything happen in the Overtime though both teams had some great tries. Nashville would end up winning after David Legwand got Bryz to open up and went 5 hole on him. Just prior Radim Vrbata did his patented back hand that beat Rinne, but went off the post and the crossbar but not in.

Other Notes:

• Adrian Aucoin missed his first shootout chance of his career tonight as Tippet put him in the top 3. He's the closer for a reason Tipp...
• The two middle lines were juggled around a bit. The Czechs and Winnik-Noki-Korpi were the only ones consistently together. 
• The forwards were the weak spot on D allowing guys to get into the slot pretty easily.
• The Coyotes magic number is now just 1 point as Calgary lost tonight. 
• There were only 3 penalties the entire game.
• Chicago lost badly to Columbus so the Coyotes are just a point back of them, though with a San Jose win they'd be 2 behind the Sharks.