Arizona is Legit

Arizona is Legit

After a convincing 5-1 win against the Senators yesterday, the Arizona Coyotes have now won five of their last six games. In each of those five wins, they never gave up more than a single goal to opposing teams. The Coyotes have been in the basement of the league for many years, so it would be easy to write this hot stretch as an outlier, but that would be selling them short. While their offense has been inconsistent, they have been one of the stingiest defensive teams in the NHL over the first month of the season.

Arizona is the only team in the NHL that allows fewer than two goals per game, limiting opponents to one goal in six of their 11 games, including a 7-1 win over the Lightning. The team defense has done its part and the goaltending has been equally impressive.

Antti Raanta was one of the hottest goalies down the stretch last season and he’s picked up where he left off to start the year, while Darcy Kuemper has been providing solid backup minutes. The offense has picked up over their last six games, as well averaging 4.5 goals per game over that stretch. Now, they surely won’t average that many goals per game for the rest of the season, but they have proved their terrible start to the season, where they went five games without scoring at even strength, was far from an accurate representation of what this team is capable of. With players like Clayton Keller, Alex Galchenyuk, and others, they have enough talent to avoid being one of the lowest scoring teams in the league. If their offense can score at even just a league-average rate to complement their elite defense and goaltending, the ‘Yotes could make some serious noise this season. After all, there was a team in the Pacific division last year who few people believed in that, one month into the season, ranked top 10 in goals against and top 5 limiting scoring chances. That team was the Vegas Golden Knights and they went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. Never say never ‘Yotes fans.