Boyd scores twice as Coyotes shock disconnected Blues
While it hasn’t been easy for the Arizona Coyotes as of late, Tuesday’s game showed the team’s chemistry.
Against a disconnected St. Louis Blues squad, the Coyotes prevailed with well-executed plays on both ends that played a hand in the 6-2 rout at Mullett Arena.
The penalty kill turned away six opportunities by the Blues, while the defense was solid with 17 blocked shots. Defenseman Josh Brown led the effort with five shots.
It took the offense some time to find its footing, but once the Coyotes did find the back of the net, the bounces kept coming. Travis Boyd scored two momentous goals in the third period that stifled any comeback hopes from the Blues.
“We’ve lost a lot of good players, but we’ve got a next guy up mentality and everyone who has come in has done a really good job,” Boyd said. “We can come out and put up efforts like tonight. It’s all about mindset coming and playing the right way with detail. It’s exciting and hopefully we can continue to play well down the stretch.”
The offense was backed up by an outstanding effort from Karel Vejmelka in net. Vejmelka didn’t make it easy on the Blues and stopped 40 of 42 shots.
Rewriting the start
The first period was not the start that Coyotes head coach Andre Tourigny wanted with the Blues taking the lead on Pavel Buchnevich’s wrister at 2:12. But the early edge from the Blues wasn’t sustained.
“They came out hot and had chances to score,” Tourigny said. “I think they had more breakaways than we gave up in the last three months. It was not a perfect game, but it was a game of will.”
Matias Maccelli has been a mastermind for the Coyotes offense this season. His ability to read plays has been unparalleled and he continued his spectacular play to jumpstart the offense.
He almost had his own goal at 1:30 when he returned a takeaway near the neutral zone for a one-on-one opportunity against Jordan Binnington, but he was turned away. Maccelli created puck luck for others when he set up Connor Mackey at the point, whose shot was quickly smacked in by Christian Fischer near the crease at 12:53 in the first.
Momentum changer
Vejmelka had a myriad of stunning saves in the game, but none compared to the steal against Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas’ play midway through the second period.
The speedy Kyrou came up to the net on a two-on-none chance and slid a cross-crease pass to Thomas, whose one-timer was swiped away by Vejmelka.
“That’s a desperate team over there and they haven’t been playing too well. We knew that they have the capability to turn around. A lot of their top six, top nine are really good players,” Fischer said.
Vejmelka started the third with his hands tied on a 5-on-3 for the first 28 seconds, but didn’t bend to any pressure. Kyrou forced Vejmelka to make a spectacular save between the legs within the first minute, but couldn’t follow up with another quality chance.