In Vancouver, Thatcher Demko made 36 saves in a 4-0 shutout of the visiting Florida Panthers on Thursday night.
It was Demko’s third shutout of the season.
The Canucks honored former goalie Roberto Luongo, prior to the game.
“It’s poetic, right? Almost in the air,” Demko said. “A really cool evening and he’s such a first-class guy. I’m not super close to him, but every encounter I’ve had he’s treated me with respect and that’s really cool coming from someone you watched growing up.”
The Canucks moved to 20-9-1.
“That’s a really good hockey team over there,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said. “‘Demmer’ was solid. He looked big in the net and obviously had a good game for us.”
The Canucks jumped on the Panthers with a two-goal first period.
Andrei Kuzmenko scored all the offense Demko and the Canucks would need for a 1-0 lead at 4:03.
Dakota Joshua, who hit for a double, scored at 13:52, for a 2-0 lead headed to the middle frame.
The Panthers dropped to 17-10-2.
“Last two games, obviously we haven’t scored one goal, you got to find a way,” Florida’s Aleksander Barkov said. “We’re putting enough pucks at the net, but just got to find a way to battle for those second, third, even fourth chances.”
In the middle frame, the Canucks added two more goals to wrest complete control of the game.
Joshua hit his double midway through the second for a 3-0 advantage.
“(Connor) Garland was taking away the left side, so I knew his options were kind of limited there, and I just happened to guess the right way and he passed it to me,” Joshua said. “I don’t know if they get any easier than that.”
Brock Boeser scored off the power play at 15:41 for the 4-0 final count.
“I don’t even know if it’s day to day,” Maurice said. “We’ll see how he is [Friday]. We think we got way ahead of it … we had lots of defensemen, so we just shut him down.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 13 saves in the loss.
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