Last Night's Game

Last night's game was the first time this year's Canucks came back when trailing after 20. Shocking, ain't it? The Coyotes got their first goal when Sami Salo lost the puck between his skates in front of the net. Belanger goal. Bettman must've had something to do with this. Anyways, then the Coyotes got a power play on a Daniel Sedin penalty. (Interesting stat: both Sedins had a minor penalty in this game.) Canucks killed off most of the penalty really well, until they got scored on. It went off Tanev's leg and in. The camera panned to Tanev's face after the 2-0 goal and his lips were faaaaar too readable. Let's just say the rookie has a potty mouth. A couple of times over.

I had the game on the PVR, so after the 2-0 goal, I skipped a bit. Seeing Canuck fans cheering, I skipped back and lo and behold, 17 seconds after the Phoenix goal, Dan Hamhuis had opened the scoring for the Canucks! What a good response. After that, the Canucks were able to generate some more scoring opportunities, came close, but didn't score again in the opening frame.

Coming out hard in the second, the game was tied on a goal by Henrik Sedin after a crease clearing attempt by Adrian Aucoin landed right on the stick of Henrik. (On the power play.) The next thing it hit was the back of the net. Not more than 3 minutes later, Sami Salo threw the puck at the net, a shot going way wide hit Rozsival in front, banked off him like in a pinball machine and put the Canucks up 3-2. But with 43 seconds left in the 2nd period, Alex Burrows got beaten to the puck and Lauri Korpikoski chipped it up over Luongo. Tie game.

Third period was filled with lots of chances for both teams, but the score stayed the same. So it was off to overtime we went. Less than a minute into overtime, Alex Burrows got around Michael Rozsival and got pulled down. Penalty shot. In overtime. But the backhand was predictable and Bryzgalov knew where he was gonna go all the way. Deflected wide off Bryzgalov's pad. But it didn't matter, because a couple minutes later Hamhuis scored his SECOND goal of the night (!!!) to win the game 4-3 in OT. Asked after the game when his last multi-goal game was, he couldn't remember. It was his first 2-goal game in the NHL, and his 5th and 6th goals of the season. 3-game winning streak for our beloved Canucks!