Coyotes Are Unbeatable At Home

Keith Tkachuk proved his value to the Phoenix Coyotes once again.

Tkachuk, who had missed two straight games with a groin strain, scored a power-play goal with 5:20 as the Coyotes beat the New York Islanders 4-2 Sunday.

"We make no bones about it. He's our best player," said Phoenix coach Jim Schoenfeld, whose Coyotes (18-5-4) lost both games they played without their captain. "He's such a strong leader that we don't only miss him on the ice when he's out but we also miss him in the locker room."

Tkachuk's return helped phoenix remain almost untouchable at home, where the Coyotes are unbeaten in their last 11 games (10-0-1). Tkachuk put Phoenix ahead 3-2 when he redirected Deron Quint's shot from the top of the circles past Tommy Salo for his 16th goal of the season.

"I felt great. It just takes some time to get into it," Tkachuk said.

Greg Adams had a goal and an assist and Juha Ylonen and Bob Corkum added goals for the Coyotes.

Mark Lawrence scored his first career goal and Eric Brewer added another score for the Islanders, who had their three-game unbeaten string stopped.

"This game started out like the best game of my life and ended as the worst," Lawrence said. "We had a lot of chances and didn't capitalize."

Brewer tied it at 2 at 9:06 of the third period when he backhanded a soft shot behind Nikolai Khabibulin.

The Coyotes' power play, which had gone scoreless in the last four games, also produced the game's first goal.

Salo came to the top of the crease and made the initial stop on Jyrki Lumme's shot from the left faceoff circle, but the puck trickled off Salo's right ad into the crease. Adams skated in to flip the puck into the net to put Phoenix up 1-0 at 16:37 of the first period.

Just 64 seconds later, Lawrence took a pass from Claude Lapointe and flipped the puck between Khabibulin's pads from the right faceoff circle.

Ylonen put Phoenix back in front 2-1 at 2:10 of the second period when he took a back pass from Adams between the circle to beat a sliding Salo for his second goal of the season.

Phoenix, which entered the game with the league's 23rd-rated power play unit, finished 2-for-6 with a man advantage.

"I thought the energy level was very high today," Schoenfeld said. "This looked more like a typical Coyotes game."

Khabibulin made 20 saves for Phoenix, which improved to 13-0-2 when leading after two periods.

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