You Love 500 Hockey? This is how you get it!

A MUST WIN GAME, WON!

Sweet payback from last week's loss to Seatown which put the Nucks into this terrible 500 loop-dee-loop.

Nucks started well in the Climate Sledge Arena. But as ever, refs had to tilt the ice to even the ice.

Nucks rhythm broken by 8 minutes of consecutive PKisting. Unfortunately the Krak'n scored on one of their power plays. Or did they? Nope, it was deemed offside.

Instead, Blueger scooted up the ice and deked Daccord for his 1st shortie as a Nuck - 1st goal too. D'accord!

But still in the interests of fair and balanced reffing...

Refs have completely overlooked the muggings on Garland and Petey.
Normality.

copey

1-0 Nucks after 1. Good road start.

In the 2nd... moar Tough Taco goals. Josh wins the final stroke of the net front kerfuffle. Some in the gamethread considered it beneath their fanny dignity... calling it a 'garbage goal' and a 'greasy goal' - however now we can call it the Game Winning Goal. No, really.

Sure the Krakun'd managed to score on Demmers... for zone-clearing reasons...

That goal is on Petey...should have had it at the blue line

Westy

Didn't matter. Demmers kept the rest of the penultimate SO going - ending the 2nd with the Nucks up 2-1.

In the 3rd. Oh, in that beautiful 3rd, the Nucks played their best period in a long time.

Unlike last week's 3rd period versus the Kraklin, Nucks locked down the D-zone. Seatac only got their 1st shot 15minutes into the period. Before that tho... Nucks seal the seafawks mid period after Pete won 3 consecutive faceoffs. 3rd time lucky for Huggie, Ronnie and Laff. And us. 3-1 Nucks.

Minutes later, Hoggie breaks in with a 2-on-1, confuses Daccord on the pass/shoot dilemma - chooses to shoot a laser past the whiplashed goalie. 4-1 Nucks.

Just as the 2nd Nucks PP of the game expired, Gnarly and Myers setup Miki for goal mouth goal.

Wooo! Big 5-1 Nucking win in the (other) rainy city.

I know, if the capricious numeric hockey lotto had stuck to their improbable pattern it would have ended with... but it didn't.

DIVERSITY ON OFENCE

The bottom 6 getting it done. Hogz is on a hot streak. Unlike Bess and Pete who haven't scored in 5 games. Good thing the lower lines are picking up the slack.

Gnarly pots 2 points. Laff gets a tipped goal. Hoggie gets 2 points. Fresh callup, Aman, netted a couple points too.

That's a Tough Taco full line game.

CLIMATIZED ARENA REEL

It's Shortie and Ferrari with the winning call.

GAME STATS

SHOTS

PLAYER STATS

TACO TALK

Aman was great - really balanced the lines for us tonight

Demmer was awesome.

Teddy was great - Dakota has been playing better every game.

I really liked our 3rd. One of our best periods... of game management of the puck. It was a professional 3rd period. All 4 lines contributed.

Everyone is waiting for us to fall apart. These are nice wins.

Those are the kind of statement games... if we play the right way, and we use everybody, we can win those games.

Coach Taco

That was a good solid pro level win. A must win, but who is counting. Except all the accountants at NM.

As much as we'd like to enjoy this win for another day, we can't. Nucks are on the way to San Jose. Play a Friday night game in the tank - on a Saturday on HNIC. Try to keep up.

I can't. 5 games in 7 days. But like Taco says, gotta to learn to play tired. And we have to learn to fan tired, happy, hungover or wasted, this could be a long season with a happy bonus season to test our fanbilities. Yay!