NASHVILLE – Coyotes defenseman Michal Rozsival said after Wednesday’s morning skate that he will play in Game 3 of the team’s Western Conference semifinals series with the Nashville Predators.
Both Rozsival and forward Lauri Korpikoski skated Wednesday morning at Bridgestone Arena but Korpikoski stayed on the ice after other players had left. That’s normally not a good sign for his playing status, since players who are playing that night will normally take a short skate.
Coach Dave Tippett said Korpikoski is still day-to-day with an undisclosed injury.
INDEFINITE SUSPENSIONS
Nashville coach Barry Trotz said he did not know about the curfew violation of forwards Alex Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn before Game 2 in Glendale, adding that “hell would have frozen over” before they played, had he known.
Trotz also said Wednesday that their suspensions are not necessarily just one game long. If the Predators win Game 3, Trotz said he will consider keeping the same group in for Game 4.
RETRO NASHVILLE
The Coyotes continued to express no interest in how the suspensions might affect the Nashville lineup after Wednesday’s morning skate.
“I look at film of our team, not their team,” Tippett said. “It’s inconsequential to me. You go through changes in players every game in a series. I’m more worried about who we’re putting in.”
There’s been some media talk that losing two highly skilled players with the capability to freelance on offense might make the Predators revert to their old style of last season when they were more direct and heavy-hitting.
“The players that are going to come in are obviously going to play a little different style, maybe not play the skill game as much,” Rozsival said. “But they will play hard. They’re desperate. We look at like this: they might be a better team with the changes.”
Trotz believes the Predators are better equipped to handle the losses this season than in past years because of improved depth. But he also believes his team will play with a sense of urgency not seen in the first two games.
"If we took them lightly,” he said of the Coyotes, “shame on us."
PACIFIC PRIDE
Four teams in the Central Division finished with 100 points or more (St. Louis, Nashville, Detroit, Chicago). So did the Vancouver Canucks. Yet the early returns on Round 2 suggest it could be an all-Pacific Division Western Conference final with two teams that did not crack the 100-point barrier.
The Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings are 4-0 in the second round of the playoffs. More impressively, the teams are a combined 8-0 on the road in the postseason.
“Opportunistic,” Tippett said when asked about the road success. “There were a couple games in Chicago that could have gone either way.”
The Coyotes had the second best road record in the West during the regular season; the Kings were fourth, so road success is nothing new to these clubs.
“We don’t change a lot, home or road,” Tippett said. “We’re competitive in both areas, and I think you’ve seen that through the whole playoffs this year. I don’t know how much home ice has really been an advantage.”
QUOTABLE BRYZIE
We can’t resist quoting Flyers goalie and former Coyote Ilya Bryzgalov when he offers up one of his gems.
While talking with reporters Wednesday, Bryzgalov was asked which profession he would have chosen if he had not become a hockey player.
“Astronaut,” he responded.
Then he examined the merits of the American space program versus the Soviet/Russian space program. He noted that the first two animals in space were Russian dogs, which led to an exchange with a reporter about who had lost more monkeys in space -- the Americans or the Soviets/Russians.
“The problem with monkeys,” Bryzgalov said, “they push the wrong buttons.”
Bryzgalov quickly added that too many monkeys had lost their lives in space.
END GAME
The scoreboard at Bridgestone Arena was lit up for Wednesday's skate. It read: Predators 2, Coyotes 1. Prediction, or just a routine test? We shall see.
