In Vancouver, Thatcher Demko made 28 saves on Monday and the Canucks downed the Dallas Stars, 6-2.
It was the sixth straight win for the Canucks.
Vancouver improved to 38-28-10, and are 8-2-3 in their last 13 games.
Jason Dickinson and Brock Boeser picked up goals for the Canucks.
“We don’t want to let teams dictate and bring the game to us. It’s up to us to take it to them,” Dickinson said. “We’ve been playing that way for a good chunk of time now because we’re desperate and that’s what desperate hockey is.”
Vancouver is five points back of the Los Angeles Kings for four third spot in the Pacific Division; they are five points back of the Nashville Predators and Dallas Stars in the wild card chase.
“We understand what we need to do,” Vancouver’s Connor Garland (goal), said “You can’t take your foot of the gas. We didn’t give ourselves an easy ride to the end of the season here, so we understand it’s a tall task.”
Dallas dropped to 43-28-5.
“Half our guys [showed up], the other half didn’t,” Stars coach Rick Bowness said. “Puck management was terrible at both blue lines. Guys couldn’t handle the puck, bad decisions, kept turning the puck over at the wrong time, at the wrong places and it cost us.”
Roope Hintz s scored both goals for the Stars.
“The tenacity that he’s shown has been really incredible,” Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “For a guy that’s not blessed with a lot of size (5-foot-10, 165 pounds), he’s winning an awful lot of board battles and he’s getting that opportunity. When you give him the puck below the circles, he finds a way to make something happen, which is great and to get hot at the right time of year is even better.”
Elias Pettersson hit for a pair of goals for the Canucks.
“I thought our energy with all four lines was really good, we played the right way a lot of the game and we took them out of it,” Boudreau said. “They looked pretty frustrated to me, which is the way we have to play.”
Vasily Podkolzin also scored for the Canucks, he added his marker early in the third period for a 5-2 lead.
Jake Oettinger got the start for Dallas, but was give the hook after yielding four goals and making 15 saves.
“A couple of bad goals? Yeah, there were and at the wrong times,” Bowness said. “Obviously the first period and that fifth goal really hurt us. It’s up to the rest of the guys to battle back and give them some run support and we didn’t do that. … Your goalie gives up a bad goal, try to bail him out.”
Scott Wedgewood made 10 saves.
“We didn’t manage the puck well enough and we didn’t break the puck out at that level we have to at this time of year,” Hintz said. “We turned too many pucks over and then we didn’t have that mentality that we’re going to win every battle.”
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