The Vancouver Canucks defeated the visiting Florida Panthers Sunday night, 5-1.
Jacob Markstrom made 23 saves to get the win as the Canucks improved to 21-21-5.
Ben Hutton scored his first goal in 30 games to give the Canucks a 2-1 lead.
“I was pretty fired up, I won’t lie,” Hutton said. “It’s been a while since I scored.”
The Canucks held a 1-0 lead heading into the third but Florida tied before the Hutton goal.
Brock Boeser and Jay Beagle potted shots into empty nets to push the lead to 4-1.
“The way we played throughout the 60 minutes today I thought was really impressive,” Markstrom said. “Guys stepped up when we really needed it.”
Frank Vatrano scored the Panthers’ only goal.
“It’s obviously good to score, but at the end of the day, winning is more important than scoring goals,” Vatrano said. “We did some good things in that third period and we need to build off that and keep moving forward. We have to get more and more wins, this is a big second half for us.”
Loui Eriksson staked the Canucks to a 1-0 lead with a goal in the second period.
“It hasn’t come easy,” Eriksson said. “All you can do is just work hard and just keep working and things will turn around. It was definitely nice to score that one.”
“Our team game was phenomenal,” Canucks head coach Travis Green said. “We didn’t really give them a lot of chances. I thought Luongo kept them in it the first two periods. Loved our game tonight.”
Markus Granlund added a late goal.
[WATCH: All Panthers vs. Canucks highlights]
Roberto Luongo made 31 saves in the loss.
“I was just trying to keep the guys in it and we were able to tie it in the third and they got a rebound goal off the face-off and that was it, we couldn’t recover,” Luongo said. “It’s going to take a little more desperation. We have to be on top of our game every night, that’s how you break out of this. It’s going to take a team effort from the goaltender on out.”
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