NEXT GAME VS. CAROLINA HURRICANES
Tonight: 7 p.m. | TV: Sportsnet Pacific | Radio: Sportsnet 650 AM
HEADING INTO TONIGHT’S GAME
Canucks face Hurricanes, aim to go 4-0 under Bruce Boudreau
The Canucks won their third straight with their new bench boss, defeating the Winnipeg Jets 4-3 in a shootout Friday night.
They’ll look to extend the streak when they play host to the Carolina Hurricanes tonight. The Hurricanes defeated host Edmonton 3-1 last night to win their fourth in a row and improve to 3-0-0 on their five-game trip to Western Canada and Minnesota.
Since Boudreau was tabbed to replace the fired Travis Green on Monday following an 8-15-2 start, the Canucks defeated Los Angeles 4-0 in Boudreau’s debut, then got past Boston and Winnipeg in shootouts to move past expansion Seattle and out of the Pacific Division’s cellar.
“It’s big to get momentum when a new coach comes in,” said Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko, who made 34 saves in Friday’s win. “I’ve never been through it, but I can imagine it would be tough if a new coach came in and you lost the first handful of games. So just to get these three wins is big.
“We’ve still got a lot of work to do, we all know that. We’ve got a lot of ground to make up.”
Nils Hoglander scored two goals against the Jets, ending an 11-game goal drought.
“It’s fun to see it go in,” Hoglander said. “I don’t think we played the best game, a lot of turnovers and back and forth, but we get a win.”
The Canucks did it without defensemen Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who is considered day-to-day with an undisclosed injury, and Travis Hamonic, likely out two to three weeks with a lower-body injury.
“I thought it was a really gutsy effort by the defensemen,” Boudreau said. “Some of these guys are playing more minutes than they’ve ever played before, and you’re playing a team like Winnipeg with speed after speed and they competed their rear ends off.”
Boudreau also credited Demko.
“The only pucks that go in on him are ones where they’re impossible to get,” Boudreau said. “He must have stopped five breakaways. When you get that kind of goaltending, you’re in most every game.”
The same can be said for Carolina’s Frederik Andersen, who signed with the Hurricanes as a free agent this past summer after five seasons in Toronto.
Andersen, who is 14-5-0 for the ‘Canes, made 22 stops against Edmonton’s high-powered offence last night. Aho provided the offence with two goals and an assist, giving him 12 points over his past five games. Nino Niederreiter also scored for the Hurricanes, who are 12-3-1 on the road.
TALKING POINTS
• Can the Canucks make it four in a row? Bruce Boudreau, after Friday’s win against the Winnipeg Jets: “I said I thought L.A. was really fast in my first game (on Monday) and then Boston, I said ‘wow, they’re pretty quick,’ and then I said today, ‘Winnipeg, holy smokes!’ And now we’ve got Carolina, maybe the fastest team in the league, coming at us. So it’ll be an interesting, interesting game.”
• The Hurricanes have given up the fewest goals against in the league. Jaccob Slavin is one of the league’s best defenders and is playing 25 minutes a night. He leads what is one of the best-skating and most dynamic defence corps in the league.
• The Canucks seem likely to face his backup Antti Raanta (4-1-1, 2.41), who the Canucks know well from his days in Arizona.
UP FRONT
Pettersson pulls a Forsberg, using his old stick
Elias Pettersson’s shootout-winning goal on Friday for the Vancouver Canucks against the Winnipeg Jets had a very familiar look to it, where he skated left but pushed the puck right, trailing his stick to guide the puck back around the sprawling goaltender.
It’s called ‘The Forsberg,’ after retired Swedish superstar Peter Forsberg, who used the move to score the gold-medal winning goal at the 1994 Winter Olympics against Canadian goalie Corey Hirsch, who now works as the analyst on Canucks radio broadcasts for Sportsnet 650.
Post-game Friday, Hirsch asked Pettersson if he knew who Forsberg had scored his most famous goal on.
