Vancouver Canucks comes out victorious in a wild west shootout against San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks came to San Jose, saw the situation and conquered the merciless matchup against Sharks on Thursday night at the jam packed HP Pavilion Arena in San Jose, California. Cory Schneider rejected 44 opposition shots and all three shootout attempts
to win 5-4, showing the rest of the league that Canucks is number one.
Both teams had their moments at winning the match throughout the extremely tough competition.
Players were smashing each other into the boards and the 17,562 crowd who witnessed some great hockey entertainment, saw 38 penalty minutes given on different occasions of slashing and roughing up.
"It was a very hard game played along the boards, very competitive", Sharks’ coach, Todd McLellan, said. "The games against them have been very tight. Special teams have worked in their favour, not ours, and it's probably been the difference in the ones
we lost".
Alex Burrows and Cory Schneider were the two people who lifted Vancouver over San Jose. The former scored the entry and winning goal for his team during a high pressured shootout and Schneider who has really proved himself of being a seasoned goalie in crucial
matches, was there to back him up by making some critical saves at the right time.
"We seem to be winning all sorts of ways, and that's a good sign", said Schneider, making another rare start in place of his senior, Roberto Lungo. "They really just kept coming and coming in the third period. We sort of held the fort, and Burrows had the
big goal in the shootout to get the win".
After Burrows inaugurated the game with a Canucks’ goal assisted by both the Sedin twins, Sami Salo increased the lead to 2-1 exactly five minutes later to end the first period in Vancouver’s favour.
It was such a thrilling match that the clock didn’t want to close the first period down, 52 seconds converted into 5:02 which caused stoppage in play for a brief moment.
San Jose looked fresh in the second 20 minutes.
Devin Setoguchi scored early decreasing the deficit to one, reshooting his own deflection with an assist from Joe Thornton, making it his 400th with Sharks.
Ryane Clowe added one from behind the net within a span of 1:07 to tie it up with Vancouver at 2-2.
Mason Raymond made sure that Canucks didn’t go down in the second, raising its score again by one, getting a wrist shot in on Antti Niemi who made his 23rd consecutive start, making 24 saves.
It was some late scoring in the final period that led the fans to go wild when Torrey Mitchell tied it all up again only to be disappointed when Daniel Sedin scored his 35th of the season during a power-play but went even wilder when Ryane Clowe
got his second of the night by tipping in a shot taken by Thornton with 21 seconds remaining.
All this went down in the final two minutes making it a heart stopper as the game went into overtime.
The next five minutes were tough for Vancouver as they didn’t have any attempts on goal. San Jose shot the puck at Schneider nine times but couldn’t penetrate the solid defence that Canucks lacked during the season.
Canucks’ coach, Alain Vigneault, was proud of his team, expressing that they played well and looked like a top team in the NHL.
Burrows managed to get Vancouver’s final shootout attempt in by backhanding the puck through Niemi from 12-feet. Joe Pavelski missed the final shot for San Jose by taking it pretty far back at 27-feet.
Vancouver finished off the season with a third victory against Sharks, only losing to them back in January.
It is one game away from finishing a perfect road trip, with a final game against Calgary remaining on Saturday. Whatever happens now in the remainder of the season, Canucks will enter the playoffs with a strong season long record.
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