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Coyotes Win Fourth of Five Games

January 17, 2019, 10:10 AM ET [20 Comments]
James Tanner
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Don't look now, but the Arizona Coyotes have won four of their last five games.

No seriously, don't look, unless you want to watch an ECHL team wearing NHL jerseys. I joke, but the Coyotes are a seriously debilitated roster - no Raanta, Dvorak, Grabner, Demers, Richardson or Schmaltz - literally one-third of the team is on the injured reserve.

And yet, somehow, the Coyotes are finding ways to win.

Last night they beat the San Jose Sharks, holding on for a white knuckled win after a late San Jose goal made things a bit wobbly.

Not only have the Coyotes won four out of five, but in the two preceding games to that streak, they lost a game to the Oilers where they all but destroyed them, and then they lost in a shoot-out to the Devils.

So that's points in five of six, and a potential of having won seven of eight,which, when you consider that they are closer to missing half their team than being healthy, is damn impressive.



They are now only four points out of a playoff spot, and every single team, up to and including the two teams now occupying the Wild Card spots, sucks.

There's still probably too many teams to climb over, and it will be hard to keep winning with this roster, and even though they won five out of six games, they are only five points out of the basement.

(NHL standings are fun?)

So you probably don't want to get your hopes up too high, but they are doing well enough that I think it's pretty clear that the only thing stopping them from having been a playoff team is a level of injuries that probably wouldn't happen in a hundred years to most teams.

John Chayka has an interesting choice here, does he fold it up, accept the bad luck, reap some assets and then hope he can ice a good team next year, or does he go full hail mary despite the long odds?

It's not that tough a question - he should obviously do the former - but the Coyotes precarious situation re attendance, ownership and recent history might not let him make the right choice.
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