In Elmont, the Vancouver Canucks continued their thrashing of the New York metropolitan hockey teams on Tuesday night, in a 5-2 thumping of the Islanders.
The win was one night after the Canucks humiliated the Rangers, 6-3.
“Can’t say enough good things. They’re amazing,” the Canucks Casey DeSmith said of his teammates. “[They were] taking care of the slot, taking care of the puck, great on breakouts, and were talking to me all night. I think that was probably the best game that I’ve been a part of as far as how well we broke the puck out. I think that had a lot to do with our success, and then the guys took over in the offensive zone.”
The Canucks improved to 27-11-3 off their third straight win.
“I thought when we came out the first bunch of shifts, I knew these guys were ready to play,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said. “To win three games against New York and New Jersey (6-4 on Saturday), it’s a tough division.”
DeSmith made 18 saves in the win.
The Canucks took a 1-0 lead in the opening stanza on a strike by Filip Hronek at 16:25.
Quinn Hughes pushed the lead to 2-0 at 18:42.
“I was kind of just looking to give myself a chance where it goes in and try to get through,” Hughes said. “I think that’s the main thing.”
Vancouver extended the advantage to 3-0 when Elias Pettersson scored midway through the second period.
“I was just trying to take a couple of hard strides to get out of trouble before moving it, and I got my pocket picked,” the Isles’ Adam Pelech said. “So, that’s one I want back for sure.”
The Islanders dropped to 18-12-10 off their fourth loss in five games.
“I thought we were fine for the first 15 minutes,” New York coach Lane Lambert said. “Took a penalty. They got momentum off their power play. To come out of that period down 2-0 was very difficult to swallow, and then we just couldn’t sustain anything. Give them credit, they played well.”
Brock Nelson was the lone striker for New York.His first came off the power play at 11:11 of the middle frame to trim the deficit to 3-1.
“We just want to keep climbing up the mountain,” Hughes said. “It’s a long season. We have 41 games left, but happy with how this road trip has been (3-1-0). We got to finish strong these last [three].”
Vancouver replied quickly with a marker from Tyler Myers at 17:24 for a 4-1 lead after two periods.
“Dakota [Joshua] made a really nice play on the wall, I think by their bench, and I knew when he popped it out to me that we had some room,” Myers said. “I knew one of our other guys was coming, so once I picked my head up and saw how much room I did have, I just buried my head and shot as hard as I could.”
Nelson scored his double in the 16th minute of the third period to make it 4-2.
Nelson made it 4-2 at 15:15 of the third period with a shot glove side from the high slot.
Dakota Joshua hit an empty net 88 seconds left on the game clock for the 5-2 final count. 
Ilya Sorokin made 29 saves in the loss..
You must be logged in to post a comment.