Vancouver Canucks put San Jose Sharks on verge of elimination after 4-2 Game 4 Victory: NHL Play-offs Recap
The sell out crowd at the HP Pavilion Arena in San Jose, California on Sunday was rowdy and expecting their home team, the Sharks to level the series, but the Vancouver Canucks nailed three consecutive power-play goals to take a 3-1 lead in the National
Hockey League (NHL) Play-off Western Conference Final series.
After a 4-2 victory, the Vancouver Canucks have now put San Jose on the brink of elimination. The first 20 minutes remained scoreless as both the teams were locked down by their respective goalies. San Jose outshot the Canucks by a huge difference, 35-13,
but Vancouver made a couple of quality shots that counted. Antti Niemi faced only 13 shots and managed to save only nine while the away-goalie, Roberto Luongo blocked 33 of 35 for a near shutout.
"We're excited obviously," said the Canucks’ goal-tender Roberto Luongo. "But the series is far from over. We know that as we've seen in the first two series, the last one is always the toughest one to win. We're excited we got a win here in San Jose, but
we start shifting our focus right away for Tuesday night. We know it's going to be a big one, probably our toughest game of the series."
Vancouver showed why they’re the best team in the league when it comes to taking advantage of power-play opportunities. They managed to kill all of their five penalties during a span of 22 minutes and take advantage of four consecutive 5-on-3 added-man-advantages
in the second period alone. Ryan Kesler scored his sixth goal of the play-offs on San Jose’s first penalty followed by Sami Salo who scored two in a row, all within a span of less than two minutes.
The Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel made sharp quality passes as Henrik Sedin picked up three assists. Alex Burrows extended the Vancouver's lead to 4-0 in the first five minutes of a crucial final period for the Sharks again assisted by both the Sedin twins.
"We talked about it coming into this game that we wanted to stay out of the box, but at the same time we also talked about how we were going to deal with it," said the Canucks’ left-winger ,Alexandre Burrows. "We knew we were going to take some penalties
and we just had to deal with it, kill it and go out there and keep pushing the pace.
Andrew Desjardins and Ryane Clowe scored two goals for the home team and brought down the deficit to within two goals with 4:05 remaining, but were unable to respond after that.
San Jose will have a chance to reply back and force Game 6, if they are not eliminated when they go back to Vancouver on Tuesday to face the Canucks in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals.
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