Minnesota Wild baffle Vancouver Canucks in 2-0 shutout -NHL Update
Vancouver is the second place team in the Western Conference is definitely one of the best in the league, but Minnesota proved that they are not afraid to take some chances as the Wild shutout Canucks, 2-0, Monday night, March 19, 2012, at the Xcel Energy
Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Minnesota managed to keep their penalties at a minimum while taking advantage of the power plays of their own along with keeping the Canucks at bay throughout the contest.
"I liked the movement on the power play tonight, it's something we've been working on," Minnesota coach, Mike Yeo, said. "(Sydor) has done a good job the last couple of days, making adjustments to the set-up we are using and just the overall execution out
there. There was some really nice movement, using the whole zone and we had a couple of real nice looks because of it."
Erik Christensen kicked off the scoring with his fifth of the 2011-2012 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season on the power play with less than 30 seconds remaining to go in the first.
The first goal of the night came just a minute after Nick Johnson and Kevin Bieksa broke out into a fight as tensions rose between the two teams and were awarded a five-minute major penalty.
Both teams gave a power play opportunity to the other in the second but failed to capitalise until the third and final period that is.
After assisting the opening goal of the match, Kyle Brodziak secured the match with his 19th of the season on a breakaway with just three seconds remaining till the end of the contest. Securing it gave Minnesota and their crowd of over 17,000
a chance to roar with joy.
"You can count on one hand the number of grade-A scoring chances we had tonight 5-on-5," said Canucks coach, Alain Vigneault.
Vancouver will now go on to face Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday while Minnesota Wild could be carrying their new gained momentum snapping a three-game losing streak, against Calgary Flames on Thursday.
Minnesota might be out of the playoff race but they have showed that their certainly not giving up any time soon.
Tags: