Coyotes’ Spirit, Lack of Talent on Display in Loss to Penguins

The Arizona Coyotes are 0-1 after a 6-2 defeat at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

While the Yotes will not be favored against many teams, especially the Pens, Thursday’s game in the Steel City was beyond ugly at times for the visiting team.

Penguins captain Sidney Crosby scored 1:22 into the game before Jason Zucker and Jake Guentzel scored to give Pittsburgh a 3-0 advantage with just over five minutes of action in the books. The shots in period one were 16-4 in favor of the Pens.

Overall, the Coyotes were outshot 53-28, beat to lose pucks with regularity, and flat-out manhandled for the majority of the game.

Despite a lack of skill, the Coyotes do have one thing going for them.

The first period was about as bad as it could have been for Arizona, and the final score is an accurate representation of how difficult it was to watch the Coyotes at times in this game.

There’s no question that a distinct lack of talent, one that is not new or unexpected when it comes to the Yotes, is the reason that they couldn’t compete against Pittsburgh and won’t be able to compete consistently against many teams.

With that said, Arizona does deserve credit for pushing back against the Pens on a few occasions. I said that a four-goal margin depicted how this game was played at times, but overall, the Coyotes weren’t total pushovers.

Nick Ritchie struck for a pair of power play goals in the game, and the team was only outscored by one goal in the final two periods of play.

In fact, there were a handful of shifts, especially in the second period, where the Coyotes forced the Penguins to chase the puck around their own zone.

Even when the skill gap was apparent, the Coyotes kept their spirits up, and that is something that this team will need to continue to do moving forward if it wants to steal some games.

I said that this would once again be the last-place team in the Central Division, and nothing from its season opener suggests otherwise, but having some fight and desire could enable this young team to at least be a scrappy team each time it takes the ice.