The Vancouver Canucks will try to finish a sweep of their three-game trip on Sunday night when they face the slumping San Jose Sharks.
The Canucks started the road trip with a 4-3, come-from-behind victory over defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado on Wednesday in Denver and followed that with a 5-1 shellacking of Western Conference-leading Vegas on Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Vancouver, which started the season without a win in its first seven games (0-5-2), has gone 8-5-1 since then. The Canucks have won four of their past five games.
“I mean, very satisfied,” said forward Elias Pettersson, who scored the third of Vancouver’s three power-play goals midway through the second period to make the score 3-0 against Vegas. “We talked about bringing the same effort as we did against Colorado, and I think we did. We’re happy with the team performance today.”
J.T. Miller had a goal and two assists and Spencer Martin made 26 saves, including several grade-A chances early in the first period when the game was still scoreless. Bo Horvat added a goal, Andrei Kuzmenko contributed a goal and an assist, and Brock Boeser also scored a goal to extend his points streak to nine games.
The Canucks scored twice on the power play to take a 2-0 lead in the first period and then broke the game open with three goals in the second period, including Pettersson’s 11th tally of the season.
Martin lost his shutout bid with 3:17 to go when the puck took a crazy carom high off the glass behind the net straight to Jonathan Marchessault by the side of the goal, where he tapped it in.
“We needed to be ready (to play) from the start, and I think we did,” Pettersson said. “We played a good 60 minutes of hockey. (Vegas is) on the top of the league for a reason. If we don’t bring our best effort, it’s not going to be pretty. So very happy with the win tonight.”
At San Jose, the Canucks will try to complete the weekend back-to-back sweep. The Sharks are just 2-8-3 at home this season and are coming off a 5-2 loss to visiting Los Angeles on Friday.
The Sharks have dropped four of their past five games after putting together an impressive three-game road winning streak that included victories at Central Division-leading Dallas, Minnesota and Vegas.
“It hurts,” Sharks captain Logan Couture said after the loss to the Kings. “We were playing some good hockey, and now we’ve four of five here, so we’ve got to get back on track.
“Losing (stinks), and no one’s happy, and no one’s smiling and having a great time back there (in the locker room) right now,” Couture continued. “Part of this business of learning to win is just showing up the following day and continuing to work and work through it. … We’ve been losing too much here lately, and we’ve got to figure a way out of this.”
–Field Level Media
