The Arizona Coyotes preseason journey continues as they clash with southwest rivals, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, inside T-Mobile Arena in Vegas tonight at 7 p.m.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Coming off a 7-0 loss to the Dallas Stars at H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, Texas, on Sept. 23, the line-up tonight should look very different against Vegas.
Arizona didn’t have one player who went to the NHL Global Series preseason games in Australia last weekend, so the projected NHL starters didn’t suit up in Texas.
Instead, it was a combination of minor leaguers and prospects against a Stars team that had a few NHL players like winger Ty Dellandrea and defenseman Nils Lundkvist.
With the loss to the Stars, the hockey club from the valley is now 2-3 to start the preseason.
Vegas’ Preseason
Surprisingly, with the reigning Stanley Cup Champions, the Golden Knights, they have started off 0-2 in the preseason as they hope to retain the title this year.
So far, they haven’t started off anywhere close to how they were expected to do as they lost 3-2 to the Colorado Avalanche on Sept. 25.
Then, they followed it up by blowing a 3-1 lead going into the second period and ended up losing in overtime to the Kings’ prospects and minor league players 4-3 in overtime on Sept. 27.
The “VGK” had a line-up that consisted of stars Jack Eichel, Jonathan Marchessault , Alex Pietrangelo, and team captain Mark Stone.
Interestingly, the main story from the game wasn’t the fashion in which they lost, but Stone being heated after the game because of a clean hit he thought was dirty.
In the second period, Stone went to retrieve the puck near the back of his teams net and got leveled by Kings minor league journeyman Hayden Hodgson.
All of a sudden, a fight ensued and Stone didn’t have any nice words to say about Hodgson.
“That’s probably the last time I’ll ever play against that guy. Not really much of a player, so I’ll leave it at that.”
Mark Stone was on demon time in his post game interview. pic.twitter.com/zoOrDXVvvJ
— Spittin' Chiclets (@spittinchiclets) September 28, 2023
Furthermore, it didn’t help that their projected starting goalie, and former Coyote, Adin Hill tried to show-off and ended up costing the Knights the game.
In overtime, Kings prospect Tyler Madden received a breakaway pass from by Mikhail Maltsev and had the game on his stick.
As he skated in, he saw Hill was going to try to poke the puck away and Madden shot it over the goaltender to win the game.
Tyler Madden (1) receives the heads up pass from Mikhail Maltsev and scores the OT winner as the Kings comeback to beat the Golden Knights.
Assists:
Mikhail Maltsev (1)
Cole Krygier (1)#GoKingsGo #VegasBorn #VGKvsLAK pic.twitter.com/7u7vffkSjr— LA Royalty (@LARoyalty1967) September 28, 2023
Last Season’s Series
Last year, Vegas won the regular season series 2-1.
At T-Mobile Arena, nicknamed “The Fortress” by their community, the ‘Yotes lost 4-1 on Nov. 17 and 5-2 on Dec. 21 in 2022.
Contrarily, in the only match-up in Tempe, Arizona won 4-1 in front of the home crowd at Mullett Arena.
Lineup
Here is the Coyotes lineup for tonight:
Tonight's GAME roster @ Vegas
Forwards
Ben McCartney, Jack McBain, Michael Carcone, Liam O’Brien, Travis Boyd, Zach Sanford, Milos Kelemen, Justin Kirkland, Josh Doan, John Leonard, Travis Barron, Aku RatyDefense
Troy Stecher, Josh Brown, Travis Dermott, Victor Soderstrom,…— Arizona Coyotes PR (@AZCoyotesPR) September 29, 2023
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Alec Cipollini is a journalist covering the Arizona Coyotes and Phoenix Rising for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his new X account @CipolliniBCS
