'Yotes Notes: Hjalmarsson's First Goal Comes at Key Time

EDMONTON --DefensemanNiklas Hjalmarsson, known primarily for blocking shots and delivering hits, scored a clutch goal for the Coyotes on Monday night as they rallied to earn a point vs. the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place.
Trailing 3-2, Hjalmarsson tallied an unassisted goal through traffic at 15:21 of the third period that eventually sent the game into overtime.

"It feels good to see that one go in," said Hjalmarsson, who took 27 shots without scoring this season before netting his first as a member of the Coyotes. "It's been a while. It's always fun to be able to contribute offensively when I do it. It doesn't happen very often so I get pretty happy about it."
Hjalmarsson has scored 24 goals in 662 NHL games, plus two more over 128 playoff games. His most recent goal before Monday came on Jan. 8, 2017 while still playing for Chicago.

Hjalmarsson, an alternate captain, likes how the Coyotes have competed the past two months.
"It's a big difference from the beginning of the season," said Hjalmarsson, who led the Coyotes with three blocked shots on Monday to bring his season total to 94 in just 39 games. "We've got a totally different confidence and just a different feeling in the group. We trust each other a little bit more and we have two great goalies so it doesn't matter who's in the net, we know we're going to have a great effort in the back end and that's always a great feeling for the defensemen to know that. We've been playing great and taking a lot of points. We're just going to try to keep going here."
• Arizona trailed Edmonton, 3-1, midway through the third period, but rallied to tie the score. Christian Dvorak started the comeback by netting his 12th goal of the season at 11:31.
The Oilers seized momentum early by scoring a shorthanded goal, an even-strength goal, and a power-play goal during a 9:03 span of the first period.
"We started to play our game in the last 40 minutes," Dvorak said. "I thought the first 10 minutes were pretty good and the last 10 minutes (of the first period) we fell asleep there and they got three goals. It was good resiliency by our group."
• Antti Raanta was scheduled to start in net for the Coyotes and led the team onto the ice for warmups. That plan changed.
Per Head Coach Rick Tocchet, Raanta was "a little tight" so he decided to start Darcy Kuemper instead. Playing on short notice, Kuemper stopped 32 of 36 shots in his second start with Arizona.
"It's my job to be ready to go no matter what and I felt pretty good in there," Kuemper said. "... It was a great job by the group to stick with it, battle back and take it to overtime. That was huge. Unfortunately, we couldn't finish it off."

• Oliver Ekman-Larsson assisted on Arizona's first goal, scored by Jason Demers at 3:29 of the first period. The helper stretched Ekman-Larsson's point streak to three games.
• The Coyotes played minus Alex Goligoski, who did not travel with the team because his wife is expecting their second child. Luke Schenn replaced Goligoski in the lineup after serving as a healthy scratch for 11 consecutive games. Schenn skated 16:53, blocked two shots and delivered a game-high six hits. Zac Rinaldo also stayed behind in Arizona because of an upper-body injury.
• Arizona has earned at least one point in 10 of its past 12 games.
"I thought we played good," Tocchet said. "There were about six or seven minutes in the first period that I didn't like it, but I thought we battled back. That's something we've been building on the last six or seven weeks. We didn't like our last 10 minutes (of the first period), but after that, they had two shots 5-on-5 in the second and I thought we had some chances. It was a good game."