The three-game sweep of the NHL from Friday starts in Pittsburgh where the Boston Bruins got a hat trick rookie Frank Vatrano as they beat the Penguins, 6-2.
“There’s always relief when you’re not getting points or scoring goals. It’s awesome to finally get rewarded,” Vatrano said. “You work hard to score goals and sometimes you work even harder than you do some nights and they don’t go in. So, a night like tonight, it’s awesome to get rewarded. That’s just how goal-scoring is sometimes. Sometimes you’ll go 10 games without a goal and then they can just come in bunches. I’m glad it finally came because I was getting a little impatient.”
Loui Eriksson and Patrice Bergeron (two goals) also scored for Boston.
“We talked before this two-game series that we needed a big two games and to kind of keep pushing teams down that are below us,” Bergeron said. “Pittsburgh is one of those teams, and they’re one of those that we knew they were going to give us a big push tonight. They’re playing some desperate hockey, and I thought we weathered the storm pretty well and got back in the game. Then from there, the third [period]; I thought we controlled the third.”
The Pens’ new coach Mike Sullivan has yet to win a game as bench boss.
“For me, I’m not interested in pointing fingers at where it falls. It falls on all of us,” Sullivan said. “It starts with me. And so, we all have to be resilient. We all have to have some resolve. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of doubters out there right now. And I believe. I believe we can pull this group together.”
He may not want to point fingers but his Penguins are underperforming and their own saving grace is that many clubs around them are doing as poorly as they.
In Raleigh, the Florida Panthers shut down the recently hot Carolina Hurricanes in a 2-0 shutout.
Roberto Luongo made 24 saves for the win.
Willie Mitchell picked up the game-winner in the third; it was his first of the season.
“No one picked me up, so I just funneled to the back side, and Huberdeau made another great pass like he always does,” he said. “I don’t think the thing hit the ice again, it was right on the stick.”
It was Mitchell’s first goal in 36 games.
“It’s kind of embarrassing when you go that long and you don’t get one, so it felt good to get a game-winner on it,” Mitchell said. “Ultimately, that’s not my game. If you don’t score many, you like to make sure they’re big ones.”
In Detroit, Linden Vey ended a seven-round skills competition with a goal to beat Jimmy Howard and give the Vancouver Canucks a 4-3 win over the Red Wings.
“Good for him,” Canucks coach Willie Desjardins said. “He played well and created a couple of good chances.”
Sven Baertschi, Jared McCann and Radim Vrbata scored for the Canucks in regulation.
“We wanted to keep the puck away from their key players, (Pavel) Datsyuk and (Henrik) Zetterberg, and we did that,” McCann said.
Ryan Miller made 25 saves for 65 minutes and then made six stops in the skills portion of the game.
“It is my job to make sure we are ready to go at the start of the game, and we weren’t, so that’s on me. That might have been our worst first period of the season, and we didn’t really get going until the end of the second,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “When you are not ready to play, it takes an extraordinarily long period of time to get into gear, and we showed that tonight. We were able to do enough to earn a point.”
Joakim Andersson, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg scored for the Wings.
Howard had 37 saves in the loss.
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