Pacioretty leads Golden Knights past Coyotes in OT, 3-2
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Max Pacioretty said early Wednesday he couldn’t feel any joy about his goal Monday night because it came at the end of a blowout loss.
He got to make up for it on Wednesday night.
Pacioretty scored his fourth goal in the last three games to lift the Golden Knights to a 3-2 overtime win over the Coyotes at Gila River Arena.
A beaming Pacioretty pumped his fist and joined his teammates in celebration as they finished their road trip with four points in three games
“I had just hopped on the ice,’ he said of his goal. “I saw Shea (Theodore) had some speed against some flat-footed defensemen. He put it on net and I just pounced on the rebound.”
Theodore split the defense and put a shot on Arizona goaltender Darcy Kuemper that came off long down the middle and Pacioretty, who turned 30 on Tuesday, backhanded it right back through Kuemper’s pads.
It was Pacioretty’s second of the night and the third straight game in which he has scored.
“We’re really happy,” coach Gerard Gallant said of Pacioretty’s recent outburst. “He’s one of those guys who when he puts the puck in the net, he gets confidence and feels better about himself. He definitely did that tonight.”
The Knights (10-12-1) dominated the overtime after nearly squandering a chance to pick up two points in a key divisional game.
Derek Stepan scored his second goal of the night with 6:49 remaining in the third period on the power play to tie the game and the Coyotes (9-10-1) spent the final 1:55 of regulation with the man-advantage, but the Knights were able to hold on and force overtime.
“That’s just us being resilient,” Theodore said. “Any time something like that happens, you can’t get too down on yourself. There’s lots of game left and I thought we did a great job of winning that next shift and getting right back on the forecheck. That’s exactly what we needed.”
The Knights also needed the points as they try to keep pace with the rest of the middling Pacific Division.
Despite a 7-2 thrashing at Calgary, the Knights come out of their three-game divisional road trip with four points and feeling much better ahead of back-to-back divisional home games on Friday and Saturday.
“When you go on the road, it’s tough to win and we got two out of three on this trip and that’s the bottom line right now,” Gallant said. “I was real happy for our group tonight. I thought we played the right way for almost 65 minutes and that’s really important to give yourself a chance to win.”
It looked for quite awhile like Pacioretty’s second-period goal, one of the Knights’ most artistic of the season, would hold up as the game-winner.
After carrying the puck into the zone, Pacioretty dropped it to Alex Tuch and cut to the right side of the net. Tuch found Cody Eakin on the left side and Eakin fired it to a streaking Pacioretty on the far post for the one-timer finish.
“It felt good,” Pacioretty said. “They come in bunches. I’ve said for awhile now I think our line is going pretty well. We like our chemistry. We like how we’re helping in our own end as well. To be able chip in and help out offensively feels good too.”
Tomas Nosek tied the game at 1-1 early in the second period after the Knights forced a neutral zone turnover as he took the puck in the zone and drifted to the left and fired a shot that appeared to take a slight deflection off a defender and find the net.
The Coyotes led after a physical first period when Stepan redirected a pass from Jakob Chychrun past Marc-Andre Fleury.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Pacioretty said of the road trip. “You can look at that Calgary game and think maybe otherwise, but it’s step in the right direction to win two of three divisional games and we want to go continue on that.”
They get the chance when they host the Flames on Friday followed by a Saturday showdown against the Sharks at T-Mobile Arena.
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Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-277-8028. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.
Three takeaways
1. Enjoy the turkey. The Knights have to be feeling pretty good about where they stand heading into the holiday after coming home from the road trip with four points. Thanksgiving represents an unofficial turning point in the NHL season and the Knights find themselves only two points out of a playoff spot despite their inability to string together wins thus far.
2. Heating up. Pacioretty's recent scoring outburst has both him and coach Gerard Gallant feeling good about where his game is right now. He's up to six goals on the year, which puts him behind only Jonathan Marchessault (10) and Cody Eakin (8) for the team lead despite missing four games due to injury. Pacioretty's line with Eakin and Alex Tuch has looked very dangerous lately, including on Wednesday's night's spectacular second-period goal by Pacioretty. The overtime goal was the 11th of his career, placing him behind only Alex Ovechkin (17), Brad Marchand (13) and Jeff Carter (13) for the most in the NHL since 2008.
3. Mixing it up. Gallant said when Nate Schmidt returned from injury he would likely look at some different combinations with his defensive pairings and he certainly did that on Wednesday. Schmidt was with old mate Brayden McNabb after playing with Shea Theodore the last two games. Theodore was with veteran Deryk Engelland and Nick Holden played with Colin Miller. The result was a pretty sound defensive performance.
