Quinn Hughes, Pius Suter and Brock Boeser scored in a 3:22 span of the first period and the Vancouver Canucks beat the slumping Edmonton Oilers 6-2 on Monday night for their fourth straight victory.
Hughes also had three assists, Boeser scored twice, Nils Hoglander and J.T. Miller added goals and Thatcher Demko made 40 saves to help the Canucks improve to 9-2-1 overall and 5-0-1 at home.
“They came out to play. They had some grade-A chances and (Demko) was there for us,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “Demmer is like a smelling salt. We woke up after Demmer made about I don’t know five, six, seven unreal saves and then we started kind of to wake up.”
Mattias Ekholm and Leon Draisaitl scored for Edmonton and Stuart Skinner stopped 29 shots. The Oilers have lost three straight to drop to 2-8-1.’
“For whatever reason, they’re going in,” Oilers star Connor McDavid about the goals his team is conceding. “They’re going in off us, they’re going in every which way. Yeah, don’t have many answers on that one.”
Draisaitl cut it to 3-2 at 7:38 of the second, and Hoglander restored the two-goal advantage with 9:08 left in the period.
Miller scored on a power play at 7:51 of the third. Boeser added another power-play goal in the final minute.
“It obviously gives us confidence, they’re (Oilers) a great team,” Tocchet said. “They were favorites at the start of the year. We kind of built our identity the last couple of months, and we need as much cushion as you can get. We can’t rest on this.”
Edmonton’s stars grew increasingly frustrated as the game wore on, with McDavid cross-checking Miller before going to the penalty box minutes later for roughing. Draisaitl was handed a 10-minute misconduct during the sequence.
Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft was then given a two-minute bench minor and tossed from the game at with 6:47 left.
“You can’t script perfect hockey games,” Woodcroft said. “Sometimes another team’s goaltender stands on their head and you give up a few mistakes and it ends up in the back of the net, whether that’s a goaltender or a player. We can collectively be better.”
