The last time the Arizona Coyotes won a game was on January 20. Fans have been desperately waiting for this team to win a game and unfortunately they will have to wait a little bit longer. 20240219_Tourigny_Postgame_FTP The Coyotes lost their tenth consecutive game this time it was against the Edmonton Oilers in the form of a 6-3 defeat. Through the first 40 minutes, the Coyotes played some of their best hockey as they were able to keep up with the speedy Oilers and even out played them for large parts of the afternoon. Clayton Keller and Nick Bjugstad scored in the second period and Arizona actually held a 3-2 lead going into the final 20 minutes. In the third period everything suddenly began to change for the worst. The Oilers scored four unanswered goals while completely dominating the Coyotes who looked like a shell of themselves. While Arizona played really solid over the course of the game, it was really a couple bad minutes that led to their downfall. “We did a lot of good things,” coach André Tourigny. “We played an elite team on a tough schedule. We broke down for five minutes and we just couldn’t stop the bleeding. They had three scoring chances, three goals right there..” It’s frustrating to see the Coyotes go from a potential playoff team to losing ten consecutive games and it’s hard to look at the positives. Tourigny was able to do just that though following this loss. “It’s a process right now for us,” Tourigny said. “We are going through an extremely tough situation, we are the second youngest team in the league and we are growing. Sometimes learning is through pain. We are going through that right now. It’s really frustrating, but the last two games we played like the Yotes. We played with a lot of energy, a lot of drive, a lot of passion, so I’m proud of the way the guys battled.” It may be difficult to see right now, but Tourigny is right. The Coyotes are still in the midst of their rebuild and these growing pains while tough are just natural and bound to happen. For young teams, it’s critical to have a sense of confidence in order to succeed which unfortunately the Coyotes don’t have right now. “We have no confidence, that's exactly what we have to learn,” Tourigny said. “It’s easy to play when you are confident. When you are confident, you are playing with energy, pace, life is good, the sky is blue. When you don’t have confidence, it’s how you carry yourself outside of the rink, it’s how you carry yourself in non game days, it's how you carry yourself in the game, in the tough moments. When the opponent pushes, we need to be able to stop the bleeding. “Right now confidence is extremely fragile and we need to learn to get that back and play in those situations and want to play in those situations because that young team is a really good young team and they will play in a really critical game at some point, so they need to know how to handle it.” The Coyotes will be back in action on Wednesday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs in hopes to snap this dreadful losing streak.
