In Vancouver Saturday night, the Canucks, for a brief moment in time, found their entire game in a 6-1 victory over the visiting Boston Bruins.
It started with Anders Nilsson who made 44 saves to pick up the win.
“I don’t know if we were looking at the standings and thinking we had an easy night. … It was moments of brilliance and moments of ‘who is this team out there, what are we doing’ type of plays,” the Bruins’ David Backes said after the game.
Nilsson was an late starter after Jacob Markstrom took ill earlier the day.
“It was plenty of time to get prepared,” Nilsson said of the late notice. “I still had the whole day. I just prepared the way I normally do”
Loui Eriksson struck twice and Daniel Sedin, Bo Horvat, Sven Baertschi, and Nic Dowd added single markers for the win.
“It’s big,” Eriksson said. “We know we have to keep doing that. I thought [Nilsson] was great for us and we scored some goals. We were playing against a good team.”
It may have been a big win but the Canucks are 23-30-6 on the season and this was just their second win in eight games; it is difficult to conceive of the club suddenly reeling off 10 wins. That’s especially true given that the Bruins have lost just three times in regulation in the last 27 games and are still not in fist place in the Atlantic Division.
Tim Schaller scored the lone Boston goal as they dropped to 35-13-8
“Their goaltender was very good,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “This had the makings, it could have been one of those 6-5 jobs. I thought he was really good, we hit some posts, but at our end, it’s crept into our game, we are loose. We’ve got to nip it in the bud.”
[WATCH: All Bruins vs. Canucks highlights]
Tuukka Rask got the start for Boston but the hook was sent out after the Canucks’ fourth goal; he made just four saves in a rare flub this season.
“Those things happen but you have to deserve your bounces and [I] definitely wasn’t at my sharpest,” Rask said. “I just have to look in the mirror and be better, it doesn’t matter what happens in front of me.”
Anton Khudobin surrendered two goals on 15 shots in relief.
“We lost some one-on-one battles, both in front of our net and off the rush,” Cassidy said. “You have to give them credit, they attacked the net, but we allowed them to.”
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