In Anaheim Monday night, the Ducks grabbed an early first period lead, built on it before the end of the stanza and then held on for a win over the Vancouver Canucks, 4-0.
Shawn Horcoff scored at 1:19 of the first and Rickard Rakell added a second goal with less than a minute to go in the opening frame. Jakob Silfverberg and Corey Perry added goals I the third period.
John Gibson picked up 3rd career shutout – file photo by Brent Clark
“Every aspect of our game was good tonight,” Anaheim center Ryan Kesler said. “We’re going to win games that we shouldn’t, coming down to the last 60 or so games, but we’re going to win if we play like we played tonight. We need to keep playing that way.”
John Gibson stopped 25 shots for his third career shutout.
“He made the saves he had to make,” Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I didn’t think they had an awful lot of scoring chances, but he controlled the rebounds. We won faceoffs, which was great because he was holding on to the puck and I think he did a good job.”
The Canucks were caught flat-footed most of the first 20 minutes of the game and the Ducks capitalized.
“We didn’t have a good first period, but we were there until the last 10 seconds of that period,” Canucks coach Willie Desjardins said. “That was a big goal. We found a little bit of legs in the second and then they scored to start the third. We played a better second, but that early one in the third hurt us.”
Ryan Miller got the start and was pulled after the Perry’s goal midway through the third; Jacob Markstrom finished the game.
“There’ve been a few other goals where our situational play is not good enough,” Canucks captain Henrik Sedin said. “We know when there’s a minute or two left in the period and being down 1-0 is a big difference from being down 2-0.”
The Ducks improved to 9-11-5 and the Canucks fell to 9-9-7.
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