Vancouver Canucks @ Dallas Stars 3-6 - 10/21

Five players had two points, including a two-goal game by Erik Cole, and the Dallas Stars cruised to a 6-3 win Tuesday against the Canucks at American Airlines Center. Cole now has three goals over his past two games. Ryan Garbutt, Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Cody Eakin also scored and Kari Lehtonen made 43 saves for the Stars, who earned their first win at home this season. Radim Vrbata, Zack Kassian and Jannik Hansen scored for the Canucks, who were trailing 5-0 before Vrbata's goal at 3:39 of the second period. Ryan Miller stopped eight of 13 shots before being replaced by Eddie Lack, who made 14 saves. Vancouver started the game strong and looked poised to take an early lead. But Dallas scored first when Canucks left wing Alexandre Burrows inadvertently knocked a pass from Garbutt into his own net 4:08 into the game.

The Canucks had a great chance to even the score at 16:51 of the first when Hansen had a breakaway, but Lehtonen made a pad save on Hansen's wrist shot. Dallas added a second goal less than a minute later via the power play when Cole beat Miller with a wrist shot from the high slot at 17:46. With less than a minute left in the first period, Seguin made it a 3-0 lead with a slap shot from the right circle that beat Miller after a pass from Jamie Benn from behind the net. That momentum carried over when Benn scored 48 seconds into the second period with a slap shot from the right circle that Miller appeared to be positioned perfectly to deny. But Benn's hard shot careened in off Miller's blocker. Dallas added a fifth goal 29 seconds later when Eakin flicked a wrist shot past Miller at 1:17, prompting Desjardins to replace Miller with Lack.
Vancouver got on the board when Vrbata scored from a sharp angle, flipping the puck in from the left side of the net. But Cole scored again 1:05 later, this time when a pass from Shawn Horcoff deflected in off his skate to make it 6-1. A tip-in by Kassian with 6:05 remaining in the second made it 6-2. The Canucks looked to have made it a three-goal game early in the third when Henrik Sedin appeared to score at 2:54. But his goal was waved off after officials determined that Daniel Sedin made incidental contact with Lehtonen inside the paint. Vancouver did cut it to 6-3 at 6:45 of the third when Hansen scored from the slot while Lehtonen was distracted by a flurry of activity in front of the net. The Canucks outshot Dallas 46-28 in the game.

Stars Quotes

Erik Cole: "It's always nice to be contributing and take some pressure off our top line so they don't have to be there every night for us. It's just two games. There's a long way to go."
Lindy Ruff: "[Lehtonen] made some great saves. He was our best player, by far. When you go and make a save like that, that gives you some momentum. That's the ultimate tradeoff. You get that big save and then you go the other way. It was a situation where they're either coming back or we go the other way and get one. A lot of times you see that, when one big save leads to a goal going the other way."
Ryan Garbutt: "That [goal] was just great. It was big jumping out to the lead."
Trevor Daley: "That's [score in bunches] a huge positive. That's going to help us win games. On the flipside, we have to be good on the [defensive] side. We got two points tonight. It's a huge two points. We hadn't won at home yet. At the end of the year they don't ask how, they ask how many."

Opposition View

Willie Dejardins: "I think the first period was pretty even. They just scored on their chances. I thought we played pretty hard in the third. I didn't think we gave up. That's the only positive. I think when you're down, you always gamble more and when you're gambling more, sometimes you get more shots."
Ryan Miller: "It hit my blocker and then it hit my knob, right? Like I couldn't do that again if I tried, line up a million pucks. He kind of fanned on it, reached for it, hit my blocker and it was going wide and hits my stick I think. I don’t even know what to say. I haven't done that one in the NHL before. I've done a lot of stupid things but that's a new one."
Jannik Hansen: "Even if we get the first one, it gets waved off if there's contact. But I mean, we get a couple calls going the other way or a couple bounces here and there and this could have been a different game. But again when push comes to shove, we can't put ourselves in a hole like that."