GLENDALE, Ariz. - So much potential was wrapped up in the Phoenix Coyotes' recent six-game homestand that when it ended with a measly 2-4 showing, it felt like the team was in the midst of a meltdown.
But those four losses just verified a slump that has been in the making for some time now.
"We're not very good," captain Shane Doan said. "We haven't been very good for a while. We've been fooling ourselves with finding ways to come back and get points — tie games and get to overtime — probably the last month-and-a-half. We haven't been good enough, and we gotta be better as a group."
The Coyotes enter Monday night's meeting in Winnipeg with the Jets, the first game of a back-to-back set that ends Tuesday in St. Louis, with only four regulation wins since Thanksgiving — or their past 19 games.
They did have a six-game point streak that lasted the second-half of December, but it has been a struggle to package a 60-minute performance that not only reads a win but is an effort the Coyotes are proud of.
"Sometimes you get in funks where you're just out-of-sorts," coach Dave Tippett said. "We're out of sorts right now. Whether it's a bad mistake at the wrong time, not scoring, a chance goes one way and then maybe an unfortunate goal goes in the other way."
It isn't necessarily easy to pinpoint when the trouble spots started to percolate. Their last win streak of more than two games was more than two months ago — a five-game span Oct. 26-Nov. 5 that was a response to an unflattering 7-4 loss to the Los Angeles Kings. Back then, the Coyotes looked like a much more resilient bunch.
Even after that five-game streak ended, the Coyotes pieced together a five-game point streak that included three wins.
Now it's a challenge to hit the reset button in games, which was clear in Saturday's 5-3 defeat. The Anaheim Ducks went ahead on a goal that's usually stopped, and the Coyotes couldn't rebound.
"There are gaps in our game where we're good for 40 minutes of the game, 45 minutes of the game, but there's 15 minutes where we fall asleep or even a minute or two at a time where we're not as good as we need to be and we get scored on," Doan said.
Maybe the momentum started to shift in mid-November. The Coyotes somewhat survived a 52-shot onslaught in Chicago to grab one point from the Blackhawks in a shootout loss before returning home to edge the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-3.
But since then, they haven't been able to duplicate their early-season success.
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