J.T. Miller, Andrei Kuzmenko, Conor Garland, Dakota Joshua and Phillip Di Giuseppe each had a goal and an assist as the host Vancouver Canucks cruised to a 7-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Thursday night.
Vasily Podkolzin and Sheldon Dries also scored goals for Vancouver (32-34-5, 69 points) which defeated the Sharks for the ninth straight time dating back to Jan. 18, 2020.
Thatcher Demko finished with 17 saves to improve to 8-0-0 in eight career games against San Jose. Tyler Myers added two assists.
Tomas Hertl and Andrew Agozzino scored for San Jose (19-38-15, 53 points) which lost its eighth straight game (0-5-3) and fell for the 13th in its past 14 games (1-9-4). James Reimer stopped just 14 of 21 shots.
Vancouver jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first nine minutes of the opening period. Miller got the first goal at the 6:15 mark when he intercepted a Hertl pass at the blue line and skated in and fired a wrist shot past Reimer’s blocker side for his 29th goal of the season and fourth in three games.
Kuzmenko followed at the 8:17 mark with a backhand shot from the slot past Reimer’s glove side for his 35th goal, a franchise record for most goals by a Canuck in a first NHL season. Elias Pettersson picked up the primary assist on the play to increase his career-high point streak to 10 games.
The Sharks cut it to 2-1 just 77 seconds later when Hertl took a saucer pass from Erik Karlsson in the left circle and fired a wrist shot inside the near post for his 20th goal. It is the fifth time in his career he has tallied 20 goals in a season.
Vancouver extended the lead to 3-1 on Joshua’s backhand goal with just 0.4 seconds left in the period.
Garland made it 4-1 midway through the second period with his first goal in 14 games. He fired a backhand shot into an open right side of the net off a crossing pass by Myers.
The Sharks climbed within 4-2 midway through the third period on a short-handed goal by Agozzino, but Vancouver came right back to break the game open with two goals in the span of 78 seconds.
Podkolzin got the first one just 15 seconds after Agozzino’s goal with a wrist shot from the high slot over Reimer’s left shoulder. Di Giuseppe followed when he redirected Quinn Hughes’ slap shot from the left point for his fifth goal of the season.
Dries finished the scoring with a short-handed goal with 13.5 seconds left.
–Field Level Media
