Gaborik's hat trick sinks Canucks
Canadian Press
12/8/2002
VANCOUVER (CP) - Marian Gaborik registered his third hat trick of the season and Dwayne Roloson made 32 saves as the Minnesota Wild beat the Vancouver Canucks 4-2 on Saturday.
Gaborik, who didn't practice on Friday after suffering a charley horse the previous night against Calgary, now has 18 goals on the season and five career three-goal games.
Filip Kuba also scored while Wes Walz had two assists for Minnesota (14-7-6-1), which stopped a four-game winless skid.
Markus Naslund and Daniel Sedin scored for the Canucks (16-7-4-0), who lost for just the second time in 13 games (11-2-0). Dan Cloutier, who has started all but two games between the pipes for Vancouver, made 19 saves.
Late in the game, Canucks defenceman Ed Jovanovski was accessed a five-minute boarding major and game misconduct after taking out Jason Marshall along the side boards. The Wild winger was down for several minutes and had to be helped off the ice by two teammates.
The Canucks finished 1-for-8 on the power play while the Wild scored once in seven chances. Vancouver outshot Minnesota 34-23.
It seemed to take both teams a while to find their legs, with Vancouver coming off a six-game road trip and Minnesota wrapping up a three-game West-Coast swing.
Minnesota finally opened the scoring on the power play with just under three minutes to go in the first period. Andrew Brunette took the puck behind the net, then passed it out to the faceoff circle to Kuba, who fired it past Cloutier stickside.
Play picked up considerably in the second period with the two teams combining for three goals in the first five minutes.
Gaborik scored his 16th goal of the season 1:17 into the period. He carried the puck over the blue-line and deked a couple of times before firing the puck along the ice and into the net. Gaborik paid for the goal, though, taking a big hit from feisty Canucks centre Matt Cooke a split-second after releasing the shot.
Less than two minutes later, the Canucks cut the deficit in half with a power-play goal. Todd Bertuzzi fired a backhand pass to Naslund, who was all alone down the middle, and the Canucks captain pulled the puck to his backhand and put it behind Roloson.
Gaborik restored the two-goal lead at the 4:58 mark after taking pass from Walz, skating to the top faceoff circle and firing a perfect wrist shot over Cloutier's glove.
Daniel Sedin made it 3-2 but then Gaborik iced the victory with his third - and strangest - goal of the night. He tipped Walz's point shot but then the puck bounced off defenceman Brent Sopel's stick and over Cloutier's outstretched pad and into the net.
Notes: Last month, Gaborik became the youngest player (20 years, 266 days) to record three hat tricks in the NHL since Eric Lindros (20 years, 24 days) accomplished the same feat with Philadelphia in 1993-94 season. ... Kuba's goal was his first since Jan. 18 of last season. ... The sellout crowd of 18,422 fans honoured Trevor Linden with a standing ovation midway through the second period. During the Canucks' road trip, Linden became the team's all-time leading goal scorer after registering his 263rd goal in a Vancouver uniform.
Cheers,
Aquaman