When watching NHL games while reporting on them you don’t always get to see every little nuance that goes on for the full 60 minutes. The way I cover games is by having a screen for the feed of the game, live stats going on, as well as the AZ Vibe Twitter page open for in game tweets. This multitasking sometimes tends to take me away from the flow of the game for a minute or so (at the most). Even a minute can be too long as the momentum of a hockey game can change from one team to another in a fraction of a second.

The point I’m making here is when I first saw the Phoenix Coyotes/Calgary Flames game, it appeared to be a dominant Flames performance which I wasn’t too happy with. I didn’t see a repeat of the Vancouver Canucks game the night before but I also didn’t see a game that resembled ‘Coyotes Hockey’.

Now before I get into the nitty gritty, I do want to say both goaltenders were on their games. The outcome of the game didn’t come down to Jason LaBarbera not being able to stop the puck or making stops when he needed to. No way you can hang this loss on Jason LaBarbera. He did his job.

It was the team in front of him that did not do their jobs.

Each time I watched the game, it seemed that there was something missing that was a reason why the Coyotes lost, other than the obvious. The obvious being that this game, again, was one where the team who made the least amount of mistakes won.

As you know, the Flames were that team.

After watching the game for the second time, I found there were a few other major reasons, other than the obvious, why the game turned out the way it did. I was able to see exactly what happened and where things went wrong for the Coyotes.

The Coyotes played a good game but not a great one. The effort was there for the Coyotes. That was never an issue in my mind. However, it was the mental/tactical aspects of the game that were the issue for me as the Coyotes couldn’t work through many of them.

So let’s get into some of the reasons why the Coyotes lost the game….other than the obvious…

1) Faceoffs – They got owned in the Face-off circle once again…one in particular led to a goal. The Flames won 60% of the faceoffs after two periods.
2) The team who made the most mistakes in the game lost. In this case, this team was the Coyotes.
3) The inability to work around the fact that the Flames were crashing players around Kiprusoff to minimize rebounds and Coyotes players picking up the puck for secondary scoring chances.
4) The inability to know what’s going on around them at all times on the ice and being able to read and react to plays in time.
5) The inability to work around the defensive pressure that the Flames threw at the Coyotes in all three zones on the ice.

Let’s start with reason numbers one and two why the Coyotes lost with the first video below.

This video (below) is the Flames first goal on the power play scored by Renee Bourque’s foot. Now the first thing to note, (right at the beginning) is Flames Center Jarome Igilna pushing Martin Hanzal out of the way to win the faceoff. This is an example of the Coyotes needing to and failing at winning faceoffs in key situations. Sure it’s one faceoff. As stated above, the Flames had won 60% of the faceoffs by the end of the second period.

You can’t win any games if you can’t even take control of the puck.

The next thing to watch in this video is not how the goal was scored but Sami Lepisto, again with the Flames on the power play, challenging Ian White and allowing the goal to be scored instead of tying up bodies and/or sticks in front of LaBarbera. You might have to watch this video a few times to see both things.

One more thing about the video above…This power play was started by defenseman Mathieu Schneider taking an unnecessary holding penalty. There are time to take penalties and times not to take penalties. That was a time not to take a penalty.

This next video below covers numbers two and four in the list above.

In short, mistakes in coverage led to a Flames goal being scored by Ales Kotalik. The play starts as a puck battle on the half boards. When the puck is freed you can see forward Taylor Pyatt skating backwards into the neutral zone to cover the play potentially moving his way. However, the puck stays in the Flames offensive zone, Kotalik moves the puck along the half boards where it was picked up by Mikael Backlund. It was at this point you can see both Keith Yandle and Vernon Fiddler challenging Backlund which allowed Kotalik to take a wide open pass in the mid slot for the goal.

As you can see…two mistakes led to two Flames goals.

Regarding the Coyotes, their attempts at generating of offense in any form was decided in the second period. Leading up to the second period, the game had been a close one. The game was a very tight defensive battle with the Flames crashing three to four players around Kiprusoff when the puck got close. They excelled at picking up rebounds and keeping Coyotes players from getting any scoring chances. The Coyotes failed at negating this aspect of the game.

From what I could see, the Flames main game plan in the second and third was to pressure the puck carrier in all three zones (offensive, defensive, and neutral). The effect was that the Coyotes game plan was thrown off the proverbial track. The energy and effort was there for the Coyotes. However, the ability to work through the Flames pressure was not.

In the latter parts of the game, watching the Coyotes mount any sort of offense was like watching a kid repeatedly running into a wall expecting the wall to disappear every time they went back again at the wall but didn’t. It seemed they couldn’t work through the problem at hand (defensive pressure) and kept running at full steam ahead.

Once the third period started the Flames stepped up their defensive game plan (pressuring the Coyote puck carrier) about 10 notches. This period was the difference in the game as the Flames killer instinct squashed out any type of comeback that the Coyotes could mount. The Flames put tremendous pressure on the puck carrier by throwing two Flames players around the puck at every opportunity. The Coyotes had no answer even though there was an open Coyotes player somewhere on the ice with two Flames players on the puck.

It was the pressure the Flames put on the Coyotes puck carriers (and the Coyotes inability to solve said pressure) that was the most frustrating part of the game.

As noted above, watching the Coyotes trying to get past the Flames defensive pressure (and failing over and over again at it) was like a kid running into a wall again and again. Every time this kid ran into the wall he turned around and tried running into the wall again hoping the wall wouldn’t be there each consecutive time. The Coyotes kept running into the same situation again and again with two Flames players surrounding the puck and not looking for an open teammate to pass to.

One of the best ways to counter this is precision passing….which they didn’t do.

Yes it was a good game but….