NHL Playoffs 2012: LA Kings Clearly in the Phoenix Coyotes' Heads

After Jeff Carter augmented the Los Angeles Kings’ advantage to 2-0 at 4:47 of the second period Tuesday night, the Phoenix Coyotes were tasked with finding an extra offensive spark plug. They needed to circumvent the assertive rampart of goaltender Jonathan Quick and start hacking at the deficit.

Instead, they hacked at the Kings. Specifically, they took a few illicit hacks at opposing captain Dustin Brown when they should have been doing it at the opposing cage.

When it was still a 1-0 disadvantage, the Coyotes threw seven second-period shots at the LA netminder, all in groups of two or three and all within the first four minutes.

But then, another red light at the other end spelled only Phoenix’s second multi-goal deficit of the postseason, and their second in as many games, both versus Los Angeles—although this one was the first not to come by way of an empty-netter, and it would swell to a first-time three- and four-goal hole, all thanks to full-netters by Carter.

Between Carter’s first goal and the conclusion of the middle frame, Phoenix took one shot at Quick and made two attempts overall. In the same span, they committed two flagrant slashing penalties as well as a roughing infraction and a hit from behind that sent captain Shane Doan to an early shower.

Granted, the on-ice officials’ ruling on Doan’s hit against LA’s Trevor Lewis was questionable, seeing as Lewis turned away at the last second. And for the sake of justice, one can hope Doan will not face supplemental discipline.

Still, the way his mates responded to the mounting hardship by imposing even more of it on themselves told the story of a 4-0 falter in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.

The disturbances of the unraveling began when the Coyotes failed to percolate an assertive response to Carter’s first strike, even with a power play that came within less than five minutes.

The self-imposed tsunami broke the surface by the 16:29 mark when, already on a penalty kill, Daymond Langkow slashed Brown as they converged on a loose puck in the corner. That play coincided with Doan’s boarding felony, which meant up to 2:28 of uninterrupted five-on-three for the Kings, followed by another three minutes of an all-you-can-score buffet.

Carter capitalized on the two-man advantage with 1:11 left until intermission, but not before goaltender Mike Smith one-upped Langkow by chopping Brown in the back of his right leg.

Another major combined with a minor after the halfway mark of the third period equaled a written invitation for Carter to polish off his natural hat trick. He accepted by raking in a rebound from Smith’s front porch with 7:04 remaining.

From there, Phoenix mustered four vain bids to recompense the 4-0 pothole. That amounted to eight shots on net for the home team in each of Tuesday night’s three stanzas.

Tellingly enough, of the Coyotes’ 24 registered stabs at Quick, only 13 came from forwards, including a combined 10 solely from the likes of Taylor Pyatt, Radim Vrbata and Ray Whitney.

Neither Doan nor Martin Hanzal made a contribution to that bushel before they were ejected at 16:29 of the second and 11:01 of the third, respectively. Coyotes playoff scoring leader Antoine Vermette never even recorded so much as a wide or blocked attempt in Game 2.

Ironically, whereas the Coyotes only took three shots on the power play, they took six while short-handed. Then again, that might have been inflated simply by the fact that the Coyotes spent more than a quarter of the game (15:32) on the penalty kill.

But when the game was still a little less than 25 minutes old and the score either 0-0 or 1-0, Phoenix had brooked a mere four short-handed minutes, or about 16 percent of the elapsed clock time. By night’s end, that percentage had swollen to beyond 25 while the difference on the scoreboard quadrupled.

So much for resilience.