Groundhog Day, hockey style: Blues to play Coyotes (again!) on Friday

Just when you thought you’d seen enough of the Arizona Coyotes, for a few days at least, the NHL has added another Blues-Coyotes game to the schedule this week.

To avoid having to wait most of the week for another game, the NHL has scheduled a Friday game between the teams in Glendale, Ariz., with the puck drop at 8 p.m. Central.

This game originally was scheduled for April 15 at Arizona. But to avoid the teams having long gaps in their schedule, it was moved to Friday.

The Blues will also play two regularly scheduled games at Arizona on this trip: on Saturday (but with the start time moved back one hour to 7 p.m. Central), and Monday at 3 p.m.

Originally, the Blues were scheduled to play at Minnesota on Tuesday and Thursday. And the Coyotes were scheduled to play at Colorado on Tuesday and Thursday. But both the Wild and Avalanche have had play postponed due to COVID-19 issues, leaving the openings in the St. Louis and Arizona schedules.

So what was scheduled to be an NHL-record six straight regular-season games between teams, now becomes an NHL-record seven straight regular-season games.

Fittingly, this all began on Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, and is starting to have the feel of the Bill Murray movie of the same name.

The Blues won that Feb. 2 contest 4-3, but since then it’s been all Arizona, with the Coyotes winning twice in regulation and then again on Monday 4-3 in a shootout.

As a result of all the schedule juggling, there will only be one game left in the eight-game series between the West Division teams following Monday’s game: an April 17 contest at Arizona.

This article originally ran on stltoday.com.