GLENDALE, Ariz. – Games like these are ones that should have had the heavily favored Seattl Kraken nervous before puck drop and possibly even more so after they’d scored twice before the contest was even a minute old.
The Arizona Coyotes are going through a hellacious and likely final season in their Gila River Arena home and looked to be rolling over almost too easily Saturday night when Jordan Eberle scored 15 seconds into it and Yanni Gourde added another by the 59-second mark. But the home side, against all expectations, regained its footing quickly after, battled all the way back and handed the Kraken a painful 5-4 loss by scoring three times in a wild third period.
Lawson Crouse helped secure Arizona’s very first win all season in its 12th try, bagging his second goal of the frame with 1:05 remaining by taking a centering pass from behind the net and burying it behind Philipp Grubauer. The goal came less than a minute after Mark Giordano had tied the game with a screened blast from the left point.
Coyotes veteran Phil Kessel had put his team in front on the power play at 13:34 of the final frame with Nathan Bastian in the box for tripping. Kessel the past week surpassed Patrick Marleau for the fourth-longest “ironman” streak in NHL history and by playing his 912th consecutive affair Saturday is now two shy of Gary Unger for the No. 3 spot.
The Kraken blew a two-goal lead, allowing the equalizer just 46 seconds into the third period when Crouse took a pass in the slot and wristed the puck past Grubauer to make it 3-3.
Until now, fate hadn’t been nearly this kind to the Coyotes, who were told right before the season started that they won’t have their lease extended at what’s been their home arena since 2003. And though the team’s ownership keeps making noise about playing a final campaign here next year, politicos in Glendale continue to insist in public and behind the scenes that’s not happening.
As if another ownership crisis for this sad-sack franchise wasn’t enough, the on-ice product in this latest teardown, rebuild, fire sale or whatever it’s being termed nowadays is even worse than the off-ice soap opera.
The Coyotes entered the night 0-10-1 and just one loss away from owning the second worst start to a season in NHL history all by themselves. And they were closing in on the 1943-44 New York Rangers and their 0-14-1 start for the worst season-opening winless stretch of all-time.
In other words, they had very little to lose going into this one.
The Kraken, meanwhile, are still finding their way in a season opening that’s now at 5-6-1 with a key divisional clash ahead Tuesday in Las Vegas. This wasn’t the type of game they could afford to give away to an opponent this bad and one that spotted Eberle and company the lead before most fans had put their pregame parking stubs away for safekeeping.
The record for the quickest goal to start a game in NHL history is five seconds, achieved on four separate occasions. So, Eberle snatching away a loose puck behind Arizona’s net and shifting to his forehand to score his fourth goal in the equivalent of a period plus two minutes his last two games wasn’t really close to matching that.
But as a team record, Eberle’s 15-second strike will likely stand for quite a while. And for the quickest 2-0 lead, Gourde putting the second Kraken goal past Coyotes goalie Karel Vejmelka on a wristshot just a tick before the opening minute mark is another franchise feat that should stand the test of time.
Vejmelka could not, getting yanked from there after his second goal allowed on two shots and replaced by newly acquired Scott Wedgewood fresh off a waiver claim. The change of netminders, whether intended or not, seemed to give the Coyotes a badly-needed wakeup call and they responded just 34 seconds later when Antoine Roussel waltzed down the left side unchallenged and beat Grubauer with his team’s first shot from very close range.
It was only the sixth time in NHL history that teams had combined for three goals in the opening 93 seconds of play. And the first time since December 2007 that the first three shots of the game resulted in goals.
The Kraken would go up 3-1 before the period was out, aided largely by a giveaway behind the net by Coyotes defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin. Kraken center Alex Wennberg was harassing the defender at the time and the puck slid out to Bastian all alone in front of the net.
Bastian wasted little time shifting from forehand to backhand to deke Wedgewood for his first goal of the season.
But the Coyotes got that goal back to make it a 3-2 game just 3:12 into the second period on a defensive breakdown in the Kraken end that left Travis Boyd uncovered all alone in front of Grubauer. Christian Fischer slid the puck Boyd’s way and he had little trouble redirecting it home.
By then, the Kraken knew they’d lost forward Ryan Donato for the night with an upper body injury after he’d gone hard into the boards late in the first period. And while Eberle nearly restored a two-goal advantage in the middle frame in ringing a shot off the post – the Coyotes had done the same earlier – the Kraken entered the final 20 minutes likely feeling a lot more unsettled than expected given how the opening 59 seconds of the game had gone.
