Salo scores late as Canucks tie Flames
Canadian Press
12/16/2002
VANCOUVER (CP) -_ The Vancouver Canucks came back to salvage a point in a 3-3 tie with the Calgary Flames on Sunday but they lost two key players in the process.
Mattias Ohlund, arguably the Canucks best defenceman, left the game in the second period after spraining his left knee in a collision with Martin Gelinas. He won?t join the team on their upcoming two-game road trip through Chicago and Nashville.
Late in the third period, Trevor Linden was badly cut around his eye on a controversial high sticking call that led to Vancouver's game-tying goal.
To make things worse, centre Henrik Sedin was a late scratch from the lineup with a shoulder injury.
Canucks head coach Marc Crawford, whose team has been relatively injury free so far this season, says neither Sedin nor Ohlund will be on the team flight to Chicago on Monday morning.
Linden is also questionable.
``Linden has got a couple of cuts over his eye and they're going to get him seen tonight,'' said Crawford, who is planning to call up a few players from Manitoba for the two-game trip. ``We'll see how Trevor is after that. They're going to have an eye specialist take a look and make sure everything is all right.''
The only bright spot for the Canucks was getting a point in the tie with the Flames, who have been a thorn in Vancouver's side so far this season.
The two teams have played each other four times already with Calgary holding a 2-1-1 edge.
Scott Nichol scored a career-high three points for the Flames, including his first goal of the season.
Bob Boughner and Craig Conroy also scored for the Flames (8-15-5-3), who stopped a two-game losing streak despite the absence of Jarome Iginla, who missed his fourth straight game with hip and groin injuries. Roman Turek made 30 saves.
Sami Salo's third goal of the season tied the game with less than five minutes remaining. Markus Naslund added to his NHL goal-scoring lead with his 21st and set up Todd Bertuzzi's breakaway goal for the Canucks (18-8-5-0).
Peter Skudra, getting just his third start of the season, stopped 30 shots, including a great save off Chris Drury early in overtime.
``It's not a good situation but we have to adapt to it,'' Bertuzzi said of the injuries. ``Ohlie plays a huge amount of minutes back there but we've got young guys like Bryan Allen who can step up and play a big role. We're going to need guys to do that.''
Salo's goal, scored on a wicked slapshot from inside the blue-line, came with just one second left on a controversial high sticking penalty handed to Steve Begin. The Flames centre was called for clipping Linden, though replays showed it was actually Canuck Trent Klatt's stick that hit Linden over the eye. Confusing things even further was that Begin was given a two-minute penalty, even though Linden left the ice bleeding.
``It's just a tough call,'' said Gelinas. ``Everybody saw it and the referee was so far down I don't know how he saw it. But Steve didn't even have his stick in his hands and he got called for it.''
Naslund, who had a career-high four goals the previous night in Edmonton, opened the scoring with an early first-period goal. Less than four minutes into the game, the Canucks captain snapped a shot from the top of the faceoff circle that got through Brendan Morrison's screen and past Turek.
Calgary pulled even later in the frame with Boughner's goal but then Vancouver retook the lead when Naslund intercepted a pass in his own zone and fed a breakaway pass to Bertuzzi. He pulled the puck to his backhand and lifted it over Turek's shoulder for his 15th goal of the season at 16:52.
In the second, with the teams playing four-on-four, Nichol took a shot that Skudra stopped, but the puck fell to the ice and slowly trickled over the goal-line at 11:59.
The Flames went up 3-2 at 4:34 of the third period when Nichol passed the puck to Gelinas behind the net. The former Canuck then fed a perfect pass out front to Conroy, who beat Skudra.
``It's been a long time coming,'' said Nichol, who had only one point in 27 games going into the contest. ``You play with (Gelinas and Mathias Johansson) and you just try to shoot the puck and go to the net. They open up so much room for me.''
Cheers,
Aquaman