*Photo from Arizona Sports*
The College experience is really benefitting the boys in Arizona. Lawson Crouse scored, Nick Ritchie added a goal, and the Arizona Coyotes defeated the Florida Panthers with a 3-1 victory on Tuesday night in Tempe.
Playing the first season at their temporary home of Mullett Arena on the Arizona State University campus, the Coyotes were playing just their 3rd home game. They managed to get their first home win largely thanks to the power play, which added two more goals and is currently the 3rd best in the league.
Coyotes head coach Andre Tourigny said of the power play that "I've said it many times, the power play is a matter of execution. The pass has to be fast and be quick, and we need to be crisp. When we were zipping the puck; it was beautiful and we scored."
After the first period was scoreless, the Panthers got on the board in the second. It was Colin White who got it done, scoring 8:24 into the period for his 3rd goal of the season. A little over 5 minutes later, Crouse found the back of the net on the power play, tying the game 1-1 on his 4th goal of the season at the 13:47 mark of the second.
On another power play 8:55 into the 3rd period, it was Ritchie's turn to score, notching his 4th goal of the season with Clayton Keller and JJ Moser picking up the assists. With 1:07 left in regulation and the Panthers net empty, Keller sealed the 3-1 win with an empty net goal, with Patrik Nemeth and Christian Fischer assisting.
Tourigny gave his thoughts on the win, saying that "When we play with urgency defensively, we are a tough team to beat. We're honest. Goalie stopped 41 pucks, our penalty kill shut down a team like Florida and your power play scored two goals. That’s a good recipe. I hope we can copy and paste a few times."
Getting the start for the Coyotes was Karel Vejmelka, who got the win while facing a lot of shots. Vejmelka stopped all but one of the 42 shots that came his way, recording an outstanding .976 save percentage to get the win, increasing his record to 2-3-1 in 6 starts.
Panthers backup goalie Spencer Knight got the start and wasn't able to perform as well as Vejmelka did. Knight turned aside 18 of 20 shots on goal in the loss, posting a .900 save percentage. His record drops to 3-1-0 as a result.
After the game, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said that "The first 10 minutes of the third period is where we lost the hockey game. We didn't accept after 40 minutes it was still a tight game. We did a lot of things we haven't done this year, uncharacteristic play. Our transition game disappeared; we were trying to beat people 1-on-1."
Up next, the Coyotes get back in action on Thursday night, welcoming the Dallas Stars to Tempe with Vejmelka likely to start. The Panthers travel to face the San Jose Sharks on Thursday, with Sergei Bobrovsky to get the start.
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