Coyotes score one of the luckiest goals in playoff history.

This has got to be among the luckiest goals ever scored in a playoff series in the National Hockey League. 

On Sunday the Arizona Coyotes and Nashville Predators faced off in Game 1 of their Qualifying Round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and things got off to a pretty rough start for the Predators. Although the Coyotes put themselves in some trouble with a very early penalty, they were able to kill that penalty without too much trouble and it was following that kill that they found the back of the Predators net. It was a shot from Coyotes star defenseman Oliver Ekman Larsson that found its way into the goal, however it would be a little unfair to give Ekman Larsson too much credit for this one. Of course Ekman Larsson deserves credit for taking the shot, but the way this puck traveled after leaving his stick had very little to do with him and seemed to have a whole lot more to do with some mystical force guiding the puck itself. 

The puck came off the blade of Ekman Larsson's stick and quickly deflected off the stick of Nashville Predators forward Kyle Turris, this drastically changed the angle of the puck and appeared to have the puck going wide of the net. Instead of harmlessly sailing past the net however it struck Turris' teammate, Predators forward Matt Duchene, right in the chest. Duchene was standing a fair bit of distance from the net so again this would normally have put an end to the scoring attempt, but instead the puck took another weird bounce and floated through the air, passing just under the crossbar of the Predators' net, and gave the Coyotes a 1 - 0 lead. 

You can't possibly blame Predators goaltender Juuse Saros for not managing to stop this one, it was a small miracle that he was able to keep track of the puck at all as it bounced around like a ping pong ball, especially since the Predators goalie actually had the awareness to try and raise his back in an effort to make what would have been an impossible save. 

It was a lot of luck packed into a single moment for the Coyotes, but it seems to have deflated the Predators who have now given up 3 goals in the first period at the time of this writing. 

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