These Canucks are sure playing better of late huh? I don’t know what they have been eating, but for the sake of everyone in Vancouver lets hope they keep this up.
The Canucks travelled to New York for the first game at the Barclay’s Center to face off against John Tavares and his New York Islanders.
Ryan Miller made 47 saves through overtime and three more in a shootout, as he guided his team to the 2-1, and more importantly got them 2 points to stay in the hunt for the 8th seed in the Western Conference playoffs.
Miller stopped Frans Nielsen, Kyle Okposo and John Tavares in the tiebreaker. Radim Vrbata scored in the second round of the shootout for the Canucks, who have two straight games for the first time since Dec. 22-26.
The game also had extra significance for rookie defenseman Ben Hutton who scored his first career goal. He scored the only goal in regulation for the Canucks at the 9:46 mark of the second period after he took a pass from Daniel Sedin, who was behind the Islanders net, and put a one-timer past Jaroslav Halak.
In the third, for the second game in a row, the Canucks surrendered a late goal to send the game into a shootout. With 50 seconds remaining Ryan Strome netted his 5th goal of the season as Miller was being screened.
Before giving up the late goal in the third Miller was absolutely sensational making 21 prior saves in his return to the crease.
With Miller starting to get his legs back underneath him more and more, and Jacob Markstrom looking like a #1 goalie in the league, Vancouver may have a goalie controversy on their hands.
But hey tha’ts normal here in Vancouver. Just ask Roberto Luongo, Cory Schneider, or Eddie Lack. Yeah none of them are in town anymore..
Injury note: Canucks captain Henrik Sedin sustained an upper-body injury late in the first period and did not return. He was hit into the boards by Islanders forward Mikhail Grabovski, who got a five-minute major for boarding and a game misconduct.
Up next: The Canucks take on the New York Rangers and former bench boss Alain Vigneault Tuesday at 4:00pm.
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