Coyotes 5, Islanders 1
At last, in his 16th NHL season, Shane Doan has a hat trick, and he needed the very last second to pull it off.
The Phoenix captain, in his 1,161st game, fired a slap shot past goalie Evgeni Nabokov just before the buzzer sounded to complete the Coyotes' 5-1 rout of the New York Islanders on Saturday night.
''He wanted it in fashion tonight,'' teammate Keith Yandle said, ''a walk-off, so to speak.''
Referees reviewed the goal as Doan waited, grinning.
''I wasn't going to be surprised if it didn't count,'' he said.
That's the kind of attitude to expect from a player has who has come so close so often. If he had failed, his 39 two-goal games without a hat trick would have set an NHL record.
Doan had been, along with Scott Mellanby, the only players in league history with 300 goals but no three-goal games.
''There was a lot of excitement on that bench the last five minutes of the game,'' Phoenix coach Dave Tippett said, ''a lot of players taking short shifts to get him back out there again.''
Doan scored early in the first and second periods to set the stage but had several close tries before getting the goal at the last possible instant.
Taylor Pyatt and Oliver Ekman-Larsson also scored for Phoenix. Frans Nielsen scored the Islanders' lone goal.
Nabokov had 25 saves. Mike Smith had 32 for Phoenix.
Doan scored 1:41 into the first period and 1:39 into the second, so there was plenty of time for him to get that still-elusive third. But a handful of near misses in the third period left him empty handed. He said it was ''getting kind of embarrassing'' to have everyone trying so hard for him but failing to come through.
''My teammates kept giving me the puck and Tips kept throwing me out there,'' Doan said. ''Eventually something had to happen.''
Ray Whitney got Doan his final chance.
''I looked up and there was like four and a half seconds left,'' Doan said, ''and Whits got the puck and he started skating and I knew he was trying to find me and I was thinking `Oh my goodness, I've got to figure out how to get up there. ... I knew he was going to get it to me for a shot and I couldn't believe that it went in.''
Doan's first goal of the night, and 10th of the season, came on a deflection of teammate Mikkel Boedker's shot. Doan's shot slipped in above Nabokov's right shoulder.
The Islanders tied it on a power play exactly halfway through the period after Marc-Antoine Pouliot was called for tripping. Smith had stopped the last in a flurry of shots but the puck slipped from his left hand just outside the goal line, where Nielsen knocked it in the unprotected net.
''We had our chances, it's not like we played poorly,'' Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. ''We lost a couple of one-on-one battles that cost us goals.''
The Coyotes, who had lost six out of seven, scored twice in a 1:19 span in the second period to go up 3-1.
Doan put Phoenix ahead with a breakaway goal, his shot dribbling between the legs of Nabokov after the goalie appeared to have the shot safely blocked.
Pyatt ended a 14-game goal drought with a wrister that made it 3-1with 16:19 left in the period. Ekman-Larsson sailed a shot into the right corner of the net over the embattled Nabokov and it was 4-1 with 5:21 still left in the third.
John Tavares' assist on Nielsen's goal extended his points streak to five games. He has two goals and seven assists in that span. Nabokov has allowed nine goals in two games. The Islanders lost at Anaheim 4-2 on Friday night.
''It's very disappointing,'' New York's Mark Streit said. ''The first period of the last two games were good. We were in the game and then within a couple minutes we just threw the game away.''
NOTES: Doan had a hat trick in just 6:25 for Canada against Belarus in the 2007 world championships. ... Phoenix D Adrian Aucoin sat out the game with an injured right eye, the result of a puck to the face Thursday night in a 1-0 overtime loss to Los Angeles. ... Streit played in his 400th NHL game and teammate Tavares his 200th. ... Phoenix LW Raffi Torres returned after serving a two-game suspension. ... Doan had two power-play goals in the season opener against San Jose. ... Phoenix D David Schlemko left with a lower-body injury in the second period.