In Vancouver Monday night, Elias Pettersson struck for two goals, his sixth and seventh of the season, in a 5-2 Canucks win over the Minnesota Wild.
“Good defense leads to good offense,” Pettersson said. “In the defensive zone, if you have to block a shot for us to win, you do it.”
Jacob Markstrom made 37saves as the Canucks rebounded from a dismal 5-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins over the weekend.
Jacob Markstrom made 37 in win over Minnesota Monday night – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Vancouver improved to 7-6-0.
“[Pettersson] was good tonight, but I don’t want it to be just about him, there was a lot of good efforts,” Canucks head coach Travis Green said. “[Markstrom] was great, he wasn’t just good. They had the heat on us, and I like how hard our guys played, but [Markstrom] was a rock back there.”
Markus Granlund, Jake Virtanen and Ben Hutton also scored for the Canucks.
“That was a gutty performance by our group, especially after [Sutter] went down,” Green said. “We had a lot of guys step up.”
Jordan Greenway and Ryan Suter scored for the Wild.
“We just didn’t have the bounces tonight,” defenseman Matt Dumba said. “They had lots of shots and good movement, but it’s tough. You can’t do that to a team that is as opportunistic as they are.”
[WATCH:Â All Wild vs. Canucks highlights]
Devan Dubnyk made 26 saves in the loss.
The Wild have been playing with fire this season, allowing the opposition to score first. They had survived with a 5-1-1 record in those situations until Monday night.
“You keep doing that too often, I told them, it’s going to happen,” Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau said. “Nobody is able to come back all the time if you’re going to start that slow.”
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