Coyotes Can’t Blame Sharks Rout on Mike Smith Alone at LinesMaker

Coyotes Can’t Blame Sharks Rout on Mike Smith Alone

A lot of peo­ple rushed to blame Phoenix Coy­otes goalie Mike Smith, who was in net for all six of the San Jose Sharks’ goals tonight.

File Smith under the “If only it was that easy … ” cat­e­gory, though. Sure, Smith isn’t an ideal num­ber one goalie, but the Coy­otes don’t sport an ideal any­thing, really. (OK, Dave Tip­pett might be an ideal coach, but he has his hands full with a team that has lit­tle beyond Shane Doan and Keith Yandle.)

The Sharks pounded 52 shots on Smith, includ­ing 38 through the first two peri­ods when they scored those six goals. The Coy­otes took 29 dur­ing the entire game and only man­aged to score on the power play, which isn’t a fan­tas­tic sign for a team that will likely try to make their money at even strength.

As with any result from this week­end – or really the first two months, if you want to kill everyone’s fun – it’s impor­tant to avoid over­re­ac­tions. Still, the Coy­otes’ ros­ter doesn’t exactly scream “play­off team” right now.

Most dis­turbingly, one could argue that their defense was over­rated last sea­son, too. Shots totals can be mis­lead­ing, but many might be sur­prised that they allowed the third most spots in 2010-11. Ilya Bryz­galov was the difference-maker for them, just like Tim Thomas was for the Boston Bru­ins (who allowed the sec­ond most).

The good news is that the Sharks are one of the best teams in the NHL – espe­cially at scor­ing goals – so things shouldn’t be this rot­ten for Smith and the Coy­otes all sea­son long. That being said, it might take Tippett’s best coach­ing job yet to get this team in play­off contention.

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