Coyotes take solace in ending losing streak

For weeks, it looked like the season's finale could offer up a win-and-get-in scenario for the Coyotes and Dallas Stars with both teams locked in a neck-and-neck race for the final wild card spot in the Western Conference.

But a seven-game losing streak by the Coyotes slowed that anticipation before a win by the Stars on Friday officially eliminated the Coyotes from playoff contention and knocked all meaning out of Sunday's game.

"I was up awful early this morning having a cup of coffee watching the sun rise just thinking about that right there, thinking how exciting this day could have been and really it's going to be hollow," coach Dave Tippett said. "Standing on the bench, that's a hollow game. It's a very frustrating game for a coach."

The Coyotes did take some solace in ending that losing streak with a 2-1 win by the Stars, who looked like their goal through 60 minutes was to stave on injury before their first-round date with the Anaheim Ducks after a 17-shot effort against the Coyotes.

"It's always tough when you miss out and you're that close," winger Mikkel Boedker said. "You're in the hunt all the way through. Yeah, the air went out of the balloon. You play with pride and you play with your head up and you play as hard as you can, but it's never fun playing for nothing."

The fact that the Coyotes are bystanders for a second straight spring seems to resonate even more with Tippett. In 11 seasons of coaching, he's now missed the playoffs three times. His only absence not with the Coyotes came in 2008-09 with the Stars, who are back in the playoffs for the first time since that season at the expense of Tippett's Coyotes.

"When you get in the sports business and I've been in it a long, long time, it's about winning and losing," Tippett said. "This isn't recreational sports. This is win and lose and when you don't win enough, you don't enjoy yourself very much."

A seven-game losing also helped derail the Coyotes last season, but Tippett doesn't regard this non-playoff finish as similar to the previous one.

"Some of it is we've overachieved here, almost in the identity is overachieving, and I didn't feel like we overachieved enough," he said. "There were times when you could start to see it come, but then there were times when we would slip back and that's the frustrating part."