In Vancouver, the Canucks’ Elias Pettersson snapped a 3-3 tie with the Carolina Hurricanes at 3:28 of the third period to help send Vancouver to a 4-3 win on Saturday night.
The goal came off a nifty wraparound effort.
“I just tried to create space for myself and did a wraparound; I’m glad it went in,” Pettersson said of his second wraparound goal in the past six games. “For me, getting more shots off or getting more — I don’t know if dangerous is the right word — getting more chances, I’ve scored two of them so I’d like to keep going.”
Thatcher Demko made 21 saves in the win.
“We’re trying to build something long term,” Pettersson said. “Every game is different and today was a very tough game.”
The Canucks improved to 18-9-1.
Vancouver took a 1-0 lead on a marker from Sam Lafferty at 6:17 of the opening stanza.
“This is definitely the way we want to play,” Lafferty said of his line with Pettersson and Mikheyev. “We’re starting to get a little more familiar with each other. We can anticipate where the puck’s going to be so we can be a bit faster.”
After Carolina missed on two power play chances in the first, they fell behind, 2-0 on a strike by Ilya Mikheyev at 6:54 of the middle frame.
“We had three good looks, one-timers, seam passes, I thought they were pretty quality shots.” Aho said. “Kind of how it goes sometimes. Obviously a little frustrated, you hope you cash in on those, but everyone knew on the bench we gained some momentum and that didn’t take the wind out of the team.”
The Canes dropped to 14-12-1.
“We gave them two goals, just lack of coverage, just standing there watching the guy tap it in and that can’t happen against any team, especially a good team that knows how to play and plays hard,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
Jordan Martinook hit for a goal 29 seconds after the Canucks had taken the 2-0 lead to trim the deficit in half, 2-1.
The Canucks responded with a goal from J.T. Miller at 13:46 of the middle frame to take a 3-1 lead.
“Great change by [Pettersson], really selfless by him,” Miller said. “He easily could’ve hung around there to see what happened on offense and I don’t blame him, but he changed and I kind of got lost in coverage by coming off the bench.”
Carolina then rallied to knot the game, 3-3.
Brady Skjei knocked the deficit to 3-2 with 56 seconds left in the second period off a power play goal.
At 2:10 of the third, Carolina’s Stefan Noesen tied it 3-3.but that was ll the offense the Canes could muster the rest of the way.
“Just got to get it together, stop being negative, even though it’s hard and just support each other because we haven’t really gone through times like this before as this group and it’s tough,” Carolina’s Martin Necas said. “But just got to build off little things and we all gotta be better and just help each other out because times like this are hard.”
Use CodePHN15 4th straight loss ends with players only meeting for Canes.
Antti Raanta made 20 saves in the loss.
“The third was great,” Brind’Amour said. “I didn’t feel like they were in our end and unfortunately their best player, or one of their best players, got us on a nice individual effort. It’s not like we got dominated, but we didn’t certainly get to the game we have to play to be successful.”
In a disturbing event after the game, the Canes held a players only meeting following the loss.
“I’d obviously like to keep it in the room, but obviously we’re not happy and we’re frustrated,” Aho said. “We’ve done a lot of talking. That’s not the first meeting that we had. The time is now to show it to us and to everyone what we are capable of, and the only way out is together.”
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