The Arizona Coyotes suffer a brutal 6-2 loss against the Florida Panthers to start their three-game road trip. 240122_Tourigny_Postgame Coming into this game, the Coyotes were riding high as they won two consecutive games which put them right back in the Western Conference wild card hunt. The Coyotes' momentum would quickly go away in this contest. The Panthers perceived to score less than two minutes into the game and from there it was all Florida. Arizona gave up three goals in the opening period and unfortunately it did not get much better for them. By the end of the second period, Matthew Tkachuk had two goals on the night and the Panthers held a commanding 5-0 lead. Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther were both able to get on the scoresheet in the third period, but it was too little too late for the Coyotes at that point. Overall it was just a bad night. “We were not connected, not urgent enough, not executing; our execution was not there, our passing was not there, our shooting was not there,” head coach André Tourigny said. “It's an off night, it was one of those nights.” It’s not a great feeling to lose for any player, but for Karl Vejmelka it must be even harder. He has been struggling to find his groove all season and in his first start in five games, he gave up six goals while getting practically no offensive support from his team. “Veji needs us,” Tourigny said. “I think we need to support him better. We gave up 15 grade A chances tonight. I mean come on, we want to give a chance to Veji, to get back in the game and be as good as he has been for us. We owe him a good performance. We have not delivered that in the last couple of starts for him.” The Coyotes continue to follow the same trend over and over again. They look like a strong playoff caliber team one night and then completely look out of sorts the very next game. For a team that is looking to finally get over the hump and make the postseason this sort of consistency is just unacceptable. “We need to forget that game ASAP,” Tourigny said. Arizona will have a chance to do just that as they play the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night.
