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Coyotes open preseason play on the road

By Jerry Brown, Tribune

Once the regular season begins, the Coyotes will be spending quite a bit of time on the road. But in the preseason, they will get their traveling out of the way early.



Phoenix kicks off its seven-game preseason schedule tonight in Los Angeles against the Kings and they will stay in Southern California to play the Ducks in Anaheim on Sunday. Next week, the Coyotes jump on a plane again for back-to-back games in Portland, Ore. (against the San Jose Sharks) on Wednesday and Vancouver on Thursday.

From there, players can put their suitcases back under the beds for more than two weeks — giving the coaching staff plenty of time to observe the team in practice and three home exhibition games before opening the regular season at home Oct. 10 against St. Louis.

It's almost a complete flip-flop from last year, when the Coyotes spent the last week of the preseason on the road while trying to pare down the roster.

“We weren't crazy with the way things were set up, with all the road games at the end. It wasn't fair to the guys who are part of those final decisions,'' Phoenix coach Bob Francis said. “This format will allow us to get a good look at the young players early and then focus on getting the players who will be here ready for the season.''

Many of the Coyotes’ top veterans — forwards Shane Doan, Daymond Langkow, Mike Johnson and Ladislav Nagy and defensemen Paul Mara and Todd Simpson — won't make the weekend trip to California. Top goalie Sean Burke will start tonight and split the game with Zac Bierk, while Brian Boucher gets the start Sunday, with Jean-Marc Pelletier following him in Anaheim.

The NHL requires each team to dress 10 “NHL veteran'' players for all preseason road games, and the Coyotes will have forwards Tyson Nash, Chris Gratton, Landon Wilson, Mike Sillinger, Branko Radivojevic and Andrei Nazarov and defensemen David Tanabe, Cale Hulse and Brad Ference in Los Angeles. Forwards Brian Savage, Jan Hrdina and Krys Kolanos and defensemen Ossi Vaananen and Radoslav Suchy will get their first preseason action in Anaheim.

LOOSE PUCKS: The Coyotes will make six or seven more roster cuts after the two weekend games and about the same amount after the road trip to Portland and Vancouver, giving the team about 30 players for the final 10 days of camp .

Francis is impressed with the speed and offensive skill of Tanabe, who will be counted on to provide some of the blue line offense lost by the offseason departures of Teppo Numminen and Danny Markov. “He's a great skater, the more you see him, the more impressed you get,'' Francis said of Tanabe.

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