A pair of power-play goals from Shane Doan just three minutes apart in the final period wasn’t enough to save the Phoenix Coyotes from a 4–3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings Saturday afternoon.
Doan’s back-hander at 5:49 brought the Coyotes within two goals of the Red Wings. At 8:37 with both Johan Franzen and Darren Helm in the penalty box, he capitalized on a 5-on-3 and brought them within one.
Radim Vrbata had one goal and two assists, while Keith Yandle, who is ranked third in scoring among NHL defencemen, had three assists.
Although Ilya Bryzgalov got off to a rocky start, letting three shots get by him in the first period, he made 21 saves in the final two.
The Coyotes outshot the Red Wings 32–31.
Despite going 21–14–6 at home during the regular season, the Wings have won both of their playoff games at the Joe Louis Arena and lead the series 2–0. They won the best-of-seven series opener Wednesday night 4–2.
Pavel Datsyuk opened the scoring in Game 2 with a second playoff goal and assisted every shot that went in after. Brian Rafalski scored his second goal of the playoffs as well.
Darren Helm and Tomas Holmstrom also scored for Detroit, while goalkeeper Jimmy Howard made 29 saves.
Outhit by the Red Wings in this year’s first playoff meeting, the Coyotes came out swinging. When Johan Franzen was slammed into the boards by the Coyotes’ leading body-checker Doan, he went down in the first period and it became obvious it was going to be a physical game.
Detroit took the lead early on with power-play goals from Datsyuk and Rafalski at 10:42 and 15:50 respectively.
Set up by Datsyuk and Nicklas Lidstrom, Helm scored, his first of the playoffs, with less than a minute to go, putting the Wings up 3¬–0 heading into intermission.
Just 1:10 into the second period, Holmstrom tipped the puck in behind Bryzgalov.
Assisted by Yandle and Ray Whitney, Vrbata put a stop to the Red Wings scoring run with a snapshot on the power play at 7:02, and the third period, it began to look as if the Coyotes might even be able to turn the game around.
Doan scored twice on the power play in the final period, but the Coyotes couldn’t tie it up.
Back on home ice Monday night, the Coyotes will try to stop the Red Wings from taking Game 3.
Notes: Phoenix defenceman David Schlemko playing in the place of Derek Morris, who is considered day-to-day with an upper-body injury… Detroit’s leading scorer Henrik Zetterberg sat out a second consecutive playoff game with a lower-body injury… Ed Jovanovski took a hit in the second period and didn’t return to the game