Arizona Coyotes fall to Oilers in OT in penultimate preseason game
Sep 27, 2018, 9:06 PM
Arizona Coyotes' Derek Stepan (21) is chased by Edmonton Oilers' Tobias Rieder (22) during the third period of an NHL hockey preseason game Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, in Edmonton, Alberta. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)
(Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)
The Edmonton Oilers have a player named Connor McDavid who happens to be pretty good at hockey.
His overtime game-winner sealed the win for the hometown Oilers in Alberta on Thursday night, as the Arizona Coyotes played their second-to-last preseason game at Rogers Place and fell 3-2.
Coyotes goaltender Antti Raanta made the start and stopped 21 of the 24 shots he faced.
Before the game, the Coyotes tweeted out the lineup as the team tries to pare down its roster to 23 for the regular season. The personnel that took the ice in Edmonton were as follows:
Time to ANTTI UP. pic.twitter.com/S5zhEWRwxF
— Arizona Coyotes (@ArizonaCoyotes) September 28, 2018
The Coyotes got on the board first with a goal from sophomore forward Clayton Keller, who was penciled in to play center on the second line in the absence of Alex Galchenyuk (lower-body) and Christian Dvorak (lower-body). Keller scored on assists from Alex Goligoski and Brendan Perlini at 4:35 in the first period.
Mikko Koskinen was tending the net for Edmonton and stopped 27 of 29 shots faced.
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McDavid scored unassisted at 5:58 in the second period to knot things up 1-1, but Christian Fischer would get it back before the period ended. His power play goal, assisted by Keller and Goligoski, came at 11:47 in the middle frame to make it 2-1 Coyotes.
Fischer was listed in the lineup as playing on the top line with Richard Panik and Derek Stepan.
But at 0:35 in the third period, former Coyotes forward Tobias Rieder — who signed with Edmonton in the offseason — scored a goal assisted by Ryan Strome, the brother of Coyotes center Dylan Strome. That made it 2-2.
McDavid’s goal in overtime, his second of the night, sealed the win for Edmonton.
The Coyotes have one more preseason game — in Kelowna, B.C. against the Vancouver Canucks — before getting the regular season underway. They’ll open on the road in Dallas on Thursday before coming back home to play the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday.
