A sweep of th4e NHL from Monday night is limited to two games with the third covered elsewhere.
In Vancouver, Jake Virtanen and Bo Horvat led the Canucks offense in a 4-1 win over the visiting Philadelphia Flyers.
“I felt more relaxed coming to the rink today,” said Virtanen, who finished with three shots and three hits. “Forty-eight hours, it was a pretty big change for me. Going from getting ripped on video yesterday, to getting the news, to getting my first one today, it was pretty special.”
For the Flyers it was their fourth straight loss.
Ryan Miller made 27 saves for the win as the Canucks improved to 6-2-4.
Claude Giroux scored the Flyers only goal.
“Offensively it’s one of their best games we’ve had but we just have to find a way to put it in the net,” said Giroux, who ended a four-game goal drought with a pretty individual move on a partial breakaway. “We’re not happy because we lost, but we did a lot of things better.”
Steve Mason had 30 saves in the loss.
“We’re not happy and these aren’t easy times, but the group will stay together and keep working hard,” Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said. “We had a lot of good opportunities. We put more pucks to the net tonight. I thought we had a more concreted effort to get some bodies to the blue paint. There was a couple pucks that squeaked wide, a couple pucks that I don’t think [Miller] saw that hit him, but that’s good goaltending on his part and we just have to stay with it.”
In Toronto, Joffrey Lupul scored twice to help the Maple Leafs end the Dallas Stars streak with a 4-1 win.
“Our penalty kill was good, our power play got two goals and [Reimer] made big saves, so everything was in order tonight,” Lupul said. “That’s how you have to win in this league; you have to win the special teams battle, and that’s what we did tonight.”
It was a rare complete game effort for the Leafs who improved to 2-7-2 on the year.
“I am being asked to do different things and I am enjoying the role,” Lupul said. “We played the whole night against their top line and I think that is the best line in the NHL right now. You have to play a little differently than if you were matched up against another line. You can’t give them more opportunities than they are going to create on their own. It wasn’t easy playing against them.”
James Reimer made 43 saves for Toronto in the win.
“I feel like I’ve been playing well this season, not getting a couple bounces and tonight I got a couple bounces, a couple posts and a couple that managed to hit me when I was sprawling,” Reimer said. “It was one of those nights where you worked hard and you got rewarded.”
Reimer is playing well but it’s the team in front of him that lets him down.
“I don’t know if we deserved to win,” Stars coach Lindy Ruff said. “We had a couple of missed assignments right in front of our own net and that can change the game. At the same time, I thought Reimer was real good. He made some real key saves. We had some opportunities to turn the momentum, but I still think when you hand a team two goals on missed assignments, I don’t think at the end of the night you deserve to win.”
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