*Photo from The Hockey News*
Things keep humming along in western Canada. Ilya Mikheyev had two assists, Nikita Zadorov scored a pair of goals, and the Vancouver Canucks defeated the Montreal Canadiens with a 4-1 victory on Thursday night in Vancouver.
The Canucks won their second straight game and are 6-1-1 in their last 8 games. They lead the Western Conference in points with 96 and are one point behind the Boston Bruins for the most in the league. Mikheyev and Zadorov paced the Canucks on the scoresheet.
Late in the first period was when the Canucks got the scoring started. Zadorov did the honors, making it 1-0 Canucks on his 5th goal of the season with Mikheyev and Elias Lindholm assisting. Zadorov scored his second goal of the game with 27 seconds left in the first, doubling the lead to 2-0 with help from Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty.
Conor Garland gave the Canucks a 3-0 lead with 1:46 left in the second period, scoring his 15th goal of the season with an assist from Teddy Blueger. Juraj Slafkovsky got the Canadiens on the board with 53 seconds left in the period to make it 3-1. Nils Aman scored the only goal of the 3rd period for the Canucks, making it a 4-1 final.
Garland said of his goal "Teddy just made a great play. We want to be slashing across as wingers and he just had some poise and put it under the guy’s stick and hit me in stride, and I was fortunate enough the D was on a late shift and I was aware I was going to have some time there, he just couldn't get all the way over. So, I just got lucky. I hit the post and it went the right way."
It was Casey DeSmith who got the start for the Canucks, picking up the win to improve his record to 10-5-6 on the season and 2-1-1 in his last 4 games. DeSmith made 16 saves on the 17 shots he faced, giving him a .941 save percentage.
DeSmith said of his run of success that "It's definitely something to build on. After a couple of tough losses here at home, it was good to string a couple of wins together. It's getting down to playoff mode and I think the low-scoring games, we're going to have to get used to being in them."
Getting the start in net for the Canadiens was Sam Montembeault, who was charged with the loss to drop to 13-13-7 in 33 starts. Montembeault turned aside 21 out of the 25 shots on goal the Canucks had, recording a .840 save percentage.
Canadiens assistant and acting head coach Trevor Letowski said "We didn't create enough offensively. They just kind of smothered us. We didn't get a lot of sustained offensive-zone shifts. We got a couple decent looks from the interior, but not nearly enough to score goals and win. We didn't have a lot of answers offensively, but our guys played hard, we competed, but just couldn't generate enough."
The Canucks get back in action on Saturday when they host the Calgary Flames, with DeSmith likely to get the start. The Canadiens travel to face the Seattle Kraken on Sunday, with Montembeault the presumptive starting goalie.
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