The Vancouver Canucks will put their four-game winning streak on the line Monday when they play host to the Carolina Hurricanes, who are riding a three-game winning streak and looking for their sixth victory in seven games to close out a fruitful road swing.
Not only are both the Canucks and Hurricanes racking up victories, they are succeeding with by-the-game-plan performances.
The Canucks, who were winless through their first three games before changing their fortunes, rallied from a two-goal deficit en route to a 4-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday. The same night, Carolina dominated play from start to finish in an emphatic 4-1 victory over the Seattle Kraken.
“I think there’s some good plays out there, there’s some good possession time,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said of his charges. “We’re converting on some nice plays. … The conversion, the plays, some of the concepts we’ve talked about training camp, and especially last week, you can see guys trying to apply it out there, so that’s nice to see.”
The Canucks rallied with four second-period goals, three of them in a 65-second span. It’s hard to decide which was better news: the fact slumping star Elias Pettersson netted his first goal of the season or that all four lines lit the lamp for Vancouver.
“It’s important for each and every guy to contribute,” said forward Kiefer Sherwood, who scored during his team’s offensive outburst and is riding a career-best four-game point streak. “It’s something that we need to have over the course of a season. Depth is obviously very important for every team that wants to go far, so it’s nice to see guys get rewarded.”
The Hurricanes are ending a six-game road trip in which they have won four of the first five. They will hope to build on a dominant performance in Seattle, during which they fired 39 shots on goal.
“It was a really good game for us from start to finish,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We were on it. We didn’t spend a lot of time in our zone. I thought we could have scored a lot more goals. Overall, a really good effort.”
Carolina has scored at least one power-play goal in five consecutive games, which has helped set a tone in each of those outings.
“I think our special teams have been good. That’s been a key part in all games,” said forward Seth Jarvis, who scored once in a two-point outing against the Kraken. “I think it’s just kind of the way we’re sticking with our game. In the first couple games of the year, we were debating it. Now we’re kind of all in on it, bought in. It’s paying off for us.”
Also helping Carolina’s success is the team’s ability to storm out of the gates. The Hurricanes have outshot their opponents by an 83-46 margin in the first period and 92-60 in the second period.
“In all the games we’ve had a good start,” defenseman Dmitry Orlov said. “It kind of kept us going in all those games.”
–Field Level Media