Coyotes bite Fuhr

Phoenix
Coyotes

"It just didn't go well," Fuhr said. "You can't make excuses at playoff time. It's a bad time for it not to go well."

Louie DeBrusk, who is known for his toughness rather than scoring abilities, scored two goals. He didn't score a goal in 15 NHL games this year and spent most of the season in minors.

"I'm not a big scorer, obviously," DeBrusk said. "You can look at my stats, they don't lie. The guys were joking, saying, 'Go for the hat trick,' but I was more concerned with playing a sound defensive game."

DeBrusk, Keith Tkachuk, Dallas Drake and Shane Doan scored for Phoenix who recaptured home-ice advantage in the series.

The game got rough in the second period when Blues goalie Jamie McLennan, who had replaced Fuhr, took part in fighting prompting Coyotes goalie Nikolai Khabibulin to skate from the other end in a melee that sent eight players to the penalty box at 3:48 of the second.

"Tkachuk got knocked into me and I fell on him and we were both down there," McLennan said. "I think he ended up coming up swinging at somebody and somebody gave me a bump from behind and then I don't know, it just kind of ended up getting silly."

Khabibulin said it's only the second time he's ever gone end-to-end.

"I just wanted to make sure we weren't outnumbered," he said. "I wasn't going to fight with anybody."