Elias Pettersson scored the game-winning goal and also had two assists and Thatcher Demko made 21 saves to pick up his 13th win of the season as the host Vancouver Canucks handed the Carolina Hurricanes their fourth straight loss, 4-3, on Saturday night.
It was the fifth three-point game of the season and 29th of his career for Pettersson. Sam Lafferty and Ilya Mikheyev each had a goal and an assist and J.T. Miller hit the 40-point mark with a goal for Vancouver, which won back-to-back games for the first time since Nov. 12-15.
Jordan Martinook, Brady Skjei and Stefan Noesen scored goals and Antti Raanta finished with 20 saves for Carolina.
Vancouver took a 1-0 lead in the first period when Lafferty buried a rebound of a Pettersson shot into an open right side of the net for his eighth goal of the season and his third in the past four games.
Mikheyev made it 2-0 at the 6:54 mark of the second period when he tapped in Pettersson’s cross-crease pass inside the right post for his ninth goal of the season.
Martinook cut it to 2-1 just 29 seconds later when he took a Jesper Fast pass while cutting down the slot on an odd-man rush and beat Demko with a snap shot on his blocker side.
Miller put Vancouver back up by two goals at the 13:46 mark when he one-timed a Brock Boeser pass from the top edge of the left circle past Raanta’s blocker side for his 15th goal of the season. It also matched Tony Tanti’s franchise record of 28 games for fastest player to 40 points, set in 1983-84.
Skjei cut it to 3-2 with a power-play goal with 56 seconds left in the period, shoveling in a cross-crease pass from Dmitry Orlov into an open right side of the net.
Noesen tied it early in the third period when Jack Drury’s deflection of a Brent Burns shot hit the crossbar and then landed in the crease, where Noesen tapped it into the net.
But Vancouver regained the lead, 4-3, just 89 seconds later when Pettersson picked up a loose puck behind the net and then wrapped a shot around the right post and past Raanta for his 11th goal of the season.
–Field Level Media
