Confusion helps Coyotes to win over Flyers
Keith Yandle and the Phoenix Coyotes took advantage of the Philadelphia Flyers' momentary confusion Saturday night.
Yandle scored a power-play goal with 9:41 remaining to help the Coyotes beat the Flyers, 3-1, on Saturday night for their second victory in three games.
"I just found a lane and Lombo (Matthew Lombardi), he's a great passer," Yandle said. "He found me and I shot it where I wanted it. It's usually not like that."
Lombardi had a power-play goal and an assist, and Shane Doan added an empty-net goal without putting the puck in the net for the Coyotes.
Scott Hartnell scored for the Flyers, who have lost two straight after winning seven of their previous eight.
Yandle's goal came moments after Adrian Aucoin bobbled a bouncing puck on the blue line. As coach John Stevens and the Flyers bench screamed for an offside call, Aucoin moved the puck to Lombardi, who passed to Yandle at the top of the left circle. Yandle took one stride in and beat Ray Emery with a hard wrist shot past his outstretched glove.
"I guess the other guys, the other team, thought it maybe was an offside," Lombardi said. "Yands just found a hole there and I kind of threw it to him and he made a great shot."
After the game, Stevens and Flyers players said one linesman was raising his arm to call offsides while the other waved off the violation.
"We all thought it was offsides and the players reacted to it," Stevens said. "But we still have to kill off the power play."
Added Hartnett, "You can't blame Ray for that one. He thought what we all did."
Doan was credited with a goal with 39.9 seconds after he was hooked by Chris Pronger while attempting to shoot on the empty net after Emery was pulled for an extra attacker.
"He (the referee) said I got him on the hands but I got him on the stick," Pronger said. "I disagree. I didn't think it should have been a goal. I didn't even think it was a penalty. He had his stick down. How am I going to get him on the hands when I lifted his stick?"
After a scoreless first period, Lombardi briefly gave Phoenix the lead. Doan drove the puck into the low slot, tapped a back pass to Robert Lang in the right circle and Lang found Lombardi in the middle of the left circle for the one-timer past Emery at 4:49 of the second period.
"We've been looking for a couple of plays that matter and those were the plays," Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said.
The Flyers answered quickly, with Hartnell taking a long outlet pass from Claude Giroux while skating backward into the Phoenix zone before turning and firing the puck over Ilya Bryzgalov's glove and just inside the right post.
NOTES: Doan tied Thomas Steen for third place on the franchise goal list with 264. ... Lombardi's goal was his first since October 22. He missed the past three games with an upper-body injury. ... The Coyotes were perfect on five penalty kills and have successfully killed 11 straight penalties over three games. ... Philadelphia has not won in Phoenix since 2003 and is 1-5-0 on the road against the Coyotes dating to 2000-01. ... Flyers center Blair Betts returned to the locker room late in the first period with a dislocated right shoulder and will miss at least a month. ... Phoenix defenseman Ed Jovanovski was scratched for the seventh straight game because of a lower-body injury. ... Emery has started 18 of 20 games this season and 10 of the Flyers' past 11.
