Thatcher Demko stopped 27 shots to record his fifth career shutout as the host Vancouver Canucks cooled off the red-hot Dallas Stars with a 2-0 victory on Saturday.
The Canucks have won three straight games and six of their last seven to get off to their best start (8-2-1) since the 2005-06 season.
Elias Pettersson scored his sixth goal of the season for Vancouver, which also got a marker from Pius Suter. It was Suter’s second goal of the campaign.
Demko, who has never lost to Dallas in seven career head-to-head meetings (7-0-0), earned his second shutout of the season. He had a shutout broken up late in the third period of a 10-1 win over San Jose on Thursday.
The Stars went 0-for-3 on the power play as they saw their three-game winning streak come to an end. Vancouver was 0-for-5 on the man advantage.
Jake Oettinger finished with 26 saves for Dallas.
Neither team scored in the first period, which was a goaltender battle that featured a parade of penalties.
Canucks forward Brock Boeser had a breakaway in the first minute of the game, but his shot hit Oettinger’s blocker. Oettinger made another superb glove save late in the period on a long shot through traffic from Quinn Hughes while the Canucks were on the power play.
It was Demko’s turn next, robbing Wyatt Johnston with the glove as the Stars had a man advantage.
Suter pounced on a loose puck in front of the goal to beat Oettinger to the glove side with a quick snap shot to open the scoring at 4:21 of the second.
Pettersson then scored to make it 2-0 at 15:54 on a nice cross-ice feed from defenseman Filip Hronek, who was allowed to walk in from the blue line.
Dallas pulled its goalie with more than three minutes remaining in the third but couldn’t break the shutout.
–Field Level Media
