Coyotes Top Sharks on Thursday for Fourth Straight Win

STATS

SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- The Arizona Coyotes know that if they want to play in meaningful games as the season wears on, success on the road is a necessity.

Their win at SAP Center on Thursday was a step in that direction.

Five Different Coyotes scored, Karel Vejmelka made 29 saves, and Arizona (17-13-2) won its fourth consecutive game with a 5-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks at SAP Center on Thursday. 

Michael Kesselring, Clayton Keller, Alex Kerfoot, Nick Schmaltz, and Lawson Crouse scored for Arizona, which wraps up its two-game road trip at Colorado on Saturday. Keller and Kerfoot finished with three points each, and Thursday marked the team's sixth win on the road this season after winning seven all of last season.

"If you want to be a successful team, you need to be able to win on the road," head coach André Tourigny said. "We talked about that last year, and we had a good start on the road, and then it faded down. We want to creep back and be a better team on the road, and I think that’s a step in the right direction."

Anthony Duclair and Filip Zadina scored for the Sharks (9-21-3), who dropped their fourth straight game. Mackenzie Blackwood made 25 saves for San Jose.

The game also marked the return of defenseman Sean Durzi, who had not played since Dec. 9 against the Boston Bruins because of a lower-body injury. The 25-year-old recorded two assists while finishing with a plus-2 rating in 22:23 of ice time.

"We won, so I'm pretty happy, but it’s just good to be back," Durzi said. "I’m relieved getting back out there with the guys, so it feels good."

Vejmelka also shined all night, and though his shutout streak was halted at just under 160 minutes with Duclair's second-period goal, the Coyotes' netminder turned made several key saves to help the Coyotes continue their recent winning ways.

The 27-year-old improved to 5-7-2 this season and has won three straight games, a span in which he's allowed just two goals.

"I think Veggie was solid," Tourigny said. "There were key moments in that game. We may have won by three goals, but it was not so for the entire game. He was rock solid for us."

Neither team recorded a goal in the first period, but the Coyotes struck first at 4:58 of the second after Kesselring took a pass from Keller and fired it past Blackwood. The defenseman has scored in two consecutive games, and has three goals in his last six games.

Duclair answered right back, tying the game 1:22 later with a breakaway goal past Vejmelka.

"They’re a team that finds a way to score sometimes, and they find those breaks on the rush," Durzi said. "I think we knew that coming in and we didn’t want to give them any, but we did, so it’s just something we want to look at, clean our game up, and get better every night."

Keller responded with a breakaway goal of his own at 8:30, slipping the puck under Blackwood, and though the puck initially hit the post, the Sharks' netminder inadvertently dragged it across the goal line with his pad. The three-time All-Star has scored in three straight games.

Kerfoot gave the Coyotes a 3-1 lead at 12:56 after Nick Schmaltz’s shot bounced off his skate and into the net, but the Sharks answered back just 23 seconds into the third after Zadina poked the puck past Vejmelka to make it 3-2.

Schmaltz restored Arizona’s two-goal cushion with a tic-tac-goal while the Coyotes were on the power play, though, taking a one-touch pass from Kerfoot in the slot and one-timing it past Blackwood.

"Power plays are so big in this league, there’s not much time 5-on-5 where you can make plays, so you have to take advantage of those power plays," Schmaltz said. "We’ve worked on that a lot and scored a lot of goals."

Tourigny agreed.

"It was a big goal in that moment," he said. "They had just made it 3-2 and we needed that goal. I think that sealed the deal."

Crouse added an insurance goal at 12:50 of the third period to effectively ice the game, and he has scored in seven of Arizona's last 10 road games.

As December winds down and the Coyotes turn their attention to the second half of the season, games like the one on Thursday could prove to be critical down the stretch.

"Every game matters right now," Durzi said. "You look back towards the end of the season, and coming up to the break these are the kind of games that matter, and it can make a difference towards the end. Sometimes teams find a way to level off and not play their best at this time of year, but it’s those teams that get points, then it comes back and helps them towards the end of the season in April."

Arizona is back in action on Saturday against the Avalanche, the final game before Christmas. Puck drop is scheduled for 7 pm MST, and will be broadcast on the below networks:

WHERE TO WATCH:
• Antenna: 61.1 Phoenix, 9.2 Tucson
• Phoenix Cable: Cox 95
• Phoenix Satellite: DirecTV Channel 61, Dish Network Channel 61
• Bullhead City / Lake Havasu: Optimum channel 6
• Flagstaff: American Cable channel 4, Optimum Cable channel 6
• Maricopa: Orbitel channel 11
• Pinal County: Mediacom channel 13
• Prescott: Sparklight channel 61
• Sedona: Optimum Cable channel 6
• Show Low / Winslow Sparklight channel 61
• Tucson: Cox channel 85, Xfinity channel 1179, Orbitel channel 208

WHERE TO LISTEN:
• Radio: Arizona Sports 98.7 FM
• Stream: Arizona Coyotes App, NHL Mobile App