Coyotes fans, meet Conor Garland. If he's not already your new favorite player, he might be soon.

Need one player to watch during games for entertainment?

Garland is your guy.

Looking for a new jersey?

Go for Garland.

Tie game and need to score by any means necessary?

Got to be Garland.

In less than six weeks since making his NHL debut, the Coyotes’ 22-year-old rookie has already begun capturing the hearts of hockey fans in the Valley with his hard-nosed style of play and penchant for scoring unorthodox goals.

A fiery competitor with a diminutive frame, Garland has all the makings of an Arizona fan favorite.

He’s the type of player who doesn’t need a stick to score goals. The type of player who seems to bleed as much as he sweats. The type of player whose work ethic can and does have a positive impact on his teammates.

“You look at his goals and he’s 6-7 feet from the net,” Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet said. “The puck is going there and it’s going off whatever body part, and they’re laughing about it but he’s doing a nice job of going to those areas and getting rewarded. We have some guys on our team that have to take a page out of that. … Conor Garland is a good story for guys to understand. That’s something we’ve preached around here, but now it’s just a matter of doing.

“... Anybody who comes to the game and sees some small kid winning battles, going to the net, getting hit, getting up and scoring a goal — how could you not love that?”

Given recent events, one could say Garland (eight goals in 11 games) has provided a face-lift to a Coyotes team fighting for a playoff spot amid an ever growing list of injuries.

Garland scored twice in Saturday’s 3-1 win over Edmonton to give him his second two-goal game over a three-game stretch. On a night where the Coyotes were visitors at Rogers Arena, even Garland probably didn’t envision himself being the most productive Con(n)or on the ice (See: Edmonton Oilers, Connor McDavid).

If Tocchet and his staff had given Garland directions to “use his head” more, Garland took the assignment too literally — as the rookie scored his first goal of the game courtesy of a puck that deflected off the side of his face and into the net.

Garland, who immediately fell to the ice as blood rushed out of his face, didn’t even realize he had scored the go-ahead goal until he was on his way to the training room. He received several stitches and was back on the bench before the period had ended. The goal went viral during and after Saturday’s game, and even made major network TV highlight reels during a weekend dominated by the NFL playoffs.

“I had a lot of texts,” said Garland, whose eye swelled so bad after the game that he did not have full vision when he woke up Sunday morning in Calgary. “I don’t have Twitter or anything, but people told me it was all over (social media). I saw it enough. I knew it was kind of going around there, but we played the next day.”

After the Oilers had tied the game, Garland used another appendage to put the Coyotes ahead for good in the third period. With Arizona on a power play, Clayton Keller ripped a shot wide and the puck returned to the front of the net and bounced off Garland's skate as he drove hard at the crease, giving him his second goal of the night — and his second game-winning goal of the season.

“It’s hard to do, don’t get me wrong, but you see Conor Garland smiling after the game,” Tocchet said of Garland’s willingness to drive to the net. “Yeah, he’s got 10 stitches but he’s smiling. That’s going to the net and he wins us the game because of it. There’s a reward because of it and it’s nice to see.”

But Garland, a former fifth-round pick, isn’t just a poster boy for a league whose forwards continue to grow smaller and skate faster. He embodies those things, sure, but Garland’s hard-nosed game features what is becoming a lost art in today’s NHL.

He’s a player after his coach’s own heart, as Tocchet boasts his fair share of scars from hard-earned goals from his own playing days.

“Do you see this face?” Tocchet joked when asked if he’s scored in similar ways. “I’ve got a million. I’m deadly 3 feet in.”

For as much success Garland has had driving to the net and working in the dirty areas of the ice, one would think the rookie has always played this way.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

As an amateur and during his first few seasons with the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate in Tucson, Garland was a perimeter player who had no interest in sacrificing his body in front of the net. But that changed when the goals stopped coming.

“I was never really a player who went to the net,” Garland said. “In juniors and my first couple years of pro, I was someone who just relied on my skating and skill to make plays. I was on the perimeter, outside of the crease and never really wanted to go in there and work.”

Crediting a sobering conversation with the Roadrunners coaching staff last season to his resurgence as a player, Garland saw immediate results after he began engaging in the dirty areas. Given the way it's continued to work at the NHL level, Garland doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon — and fans should be happy with that.

“I just want to work hard every game, compete and try to win every game,” Garland said. “If they (the fans) appreciate that and they like that, it’s something I’m going to keep doing no matter what. … It’s way more exhausting and it’s hard work.

“It’s not as fun as playing on the outside and throwing sauce, but I want to be in the NHL and I want to be here forever. I’ll keep doing what I have to do.”

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Richard Morin covers the Coyotes and Diamondbacks for azcentral sports. He can be reached at rmorin@arizonarepublic.com and by phone at 480-316-2493. Follow him on Twitter @ramorin_azc