Ahead of Arizona Coyotes' home opener, what we learned from recent road trip

The Arizona Coyotes aren’t strangers to grinding it out on the road, and the opening four games of the season were testament to that.

Facing three teams that made last season’s playoffs, the Coyotes (2-2) didn’t have much wiggle room for early mistakes.

From the comeback 4-3 overtime win over the New Jersey Devils in the season opener to the dominant 6-2 win in the finale over the St. Louis Blues, the Coyotes had some high points. But there were also early concerns, as the offense hit a wall in both losses.

“I think it was a good challenge for the group and we took that as a great chance to let the league know we’re ready to go this year and I think we showed that,” forward Lawson Crouse said. “It was one road trip and we got to continue to build and we can’t get too high. We’re .500, which ultimately is a good goal, but we got to keep going.”

Here are some main takeaways from the road trip before the Coyotes take home ice at Mullett Arena for the first time at 1 p.m. Saturday against the Anaheim Ducks (1-2).

Coyotes' goaltending is stellar

Most of the credit for the close games stems from the goaltending tandem of Karel Vejmelka and Connor Ingram. Vejmelka had a shaky moment in the first game, but recovered quickly as he turned away both shootout attempts from the Devils forwards Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt for a 33-save win.

The Coyotes had a lackadaisical effort against the New York Islanders and forced Vejmelka to stand on his head in the 1-0 loss.

Although there weren’t many close attempts from the Blues on Thursday, Ingram was quick in his ability to get to the far post and denied a wraparound attempt from Nikita Alexandrov while the game was still scoreless.

It's early, but Coyotes look strong on power play

The Coyotes have figured out how to use the skilled, speedy forwards on special teams. In the four games, Arizona converted six goals on 19 opportunities (31.6%), the third-best rate in the NHL.

There’s a lot of creativity the Coyotes can show with forwards Barrett Hayton, Logan Cooley, Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz on the first power play unit.

But there’s an added element: defenseman Sean Durzi is unafraid to jump in on the rush. Durzi’s two-way game has opened him to two goals on five shots with the man-advantage.

Coyotes' even-strength offense is ironing itself out

While six of the Coyotes’ 12 goals came from special teams, there’s still work to do in even-strength situations.

Keller, Schmaltz and Cooley have been producing at a high clip offensively for the Coyotes with four or more points in each game respectively. However, when the Coyotes needed a big goal to break the dry spell, the offense shirked and didn’t play heavy in the offensive zone.

Last season’s key contributors, Crouse and Barrett Hayton, have yet to get going. Hayton didn’t score until December last season and then started to produce, but he'll likely want to avoid that happening again. Crouse’s line with Nick Bjugstad was shifted around to include Michael Carcone instead of Matias Maccelli. Crouse hasn’t seen much of the net so far with just four shots.

There’s also considerable expectations for forward Alex Kerfoot, who signed this offseason from the Toronto Maple Leafs. Kerfoot has helped the Coyotes on faceoffs (55.6%), but hasn’t been on the scoresheet yet.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Coyotes play 1st home game of season after splitting opening road trip