Coyotes win 2-1 over the misshapen tigers. It was kind of an odd game. I figured Nashville would come out with rust, but it looked like pretty much everyone did. I think this gets us a period by period breakdown...
1st Period
Has to be one of the ugliest periods of hockey i've seen in a while with the exception of the goaltending. And I've seen ECHL hockey recently. With 6 minutes left in the period shots were 5-2. The crowd at my end of the arena was simply praying for another SOG. When Ellis made a save on a floater that was going to go past the net anyways the crowd cheered. That's how boring the first 19:50 of this period were. It was like nobody really wanted to keep possession of the puck. I don't have the times in front of me, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was more neutral zone time than offensive zone puck time for both teams combined it was simply boring. But that boredom stopped with 10 seconds left in the period. 4 on 4. Ed Jovanovski found Turris breaking away and KT made a great move to fake Ellis out of his pads for an easy goal. By the way, what happened to the Carl's Jr. promotion that gave us burgers for goals in the last minute of periods? We'd be rolling in burgers this year...
2nd Period
Not nearly as bad as the first. Both teams seemed to remember that this was a hockey game and not a game of red rover. The Coyotes PK showed that it can play well after killing a 4 minute double on Ken Klee. A 2 minute misconduct on Klee though? WTH? He's not one to get many unsportsmanlike conducts. Must have said one of the magic words to the ref or something. I didn't see what caused that... Oh. and Vernon Fiddler got the equalizer.
3rd Period
This looked more like the hockey I'm used to. Good overall play even without a lot of goals. That is until until Turris got another goal. Evner Lisin did most of the work, but Turris was able to put the rebound in the net. Even if he was getting crosschecked in the back of the head. Turris 2 - Nashville 1. I dunno why Turris wasn't on the ice for the EN time, maybe Doan doesn't want anyone getting easy hat tricks since he still doesn't have one...
Player of the Game:
This one's a no brainer... And judging by the look on his face he's surprised too...
