Payback is best served at home. A week late. Woooooooooooo!
Win the Walls! Meet Pressure With Pressure! Double Drive!
The Taco Tough motto club.
Nucks back in their sweet ROG home respond early.
Canucks going on the PK early
Westy
That's not such a bad strategy. Since Jan 1st, the Nucks - not making this up - are 4th in the league with a 86% PK. Even better, went 100% against the 4th highest scoring team's 5 power plays waste of 10 minutes.
Before the Nucks got to perfect another 2 PKs, 2 top six Nucks forwards scored. Miller gets another great pass from an opposing D and scores. 1-0 Nucks. Then our new Swede sniped a shot past the screened goalie.
ANOTHER Top 6 goal!!! What a shot.
Twitch
2-0 Nucks after 1. That's pretty good.
Know what else is good? Nucks lead the league in wins when scoring first with 28 wins.
That was a good first period other than all the penalties.
Twitch
Know what's worse to start a period? Yes, a Nucks 4 minute PP just 2 minutes in. Fortunately no shortie GA harm was done. The Nucking PP hasn't scored in 12 'oppourtunities'. But has allowed... never mind.
The next Nucks goal was the biggest goal of the game. Or at least one of the tallest. Zav scores on a point shot unseen by Lyon. 3-0 Nucks. Even better... Zav performed a cheeky 'Griddy' dance after scoring. Well played.
You know what wasn't well-played? The officiating. The only Wingie Dingie of night happened after Fischer cross-checked Huggie to the ice. No call, but it's 3-1 Nucks.
Despite the far too generous giveaways mere feet away from Demmers, the Nucks are leading by 2 after 2.
To start the 3rd, Nucks revert to their 1st period game-winning strategy. On the PK after Huggie gets called for the softest call of the night. Refs called it a slash. Wingie player had one hand on his stick. Barely.
Doesn't matter. The Nucks PK, even without Josh is perfect again. So perfect they wanted to test perfection again. Blueger with the obvious trip.
Back to the PK...awesome strategy.
Twitch
The brilliance continued with another perfect PK and then a perfect give 'n go - pretty much - other than Pete requiring a 2nd give to get Lindy to go for 2 goals in the ROG.
4-1 Nucks.
Typical Nucks ROG 3rd when they have lead.. put Demmers to work, facing an entire team of sharpshooters, who shot 15 pucks at his net. Nucks put 5 towards Lyon.
And Wings pull their goalie early, since he wasn't doing much anyhow.
Much hilarity followed as Pete, Lindy, Bess and Demmers all tried for the EN... and didn't pot it. ROG crowd were shouting at Demmers to go for it. He did... but bitter and twisted Wings D spoiled the ROG glee.
Nucks win 4-1 in the ROG!
Pete finished with 3 assists - his 11th 3 point night of the season.
Nucks extend their lead in the league with some gaudy home game stats. We like those.
NUCKS ROG RECORD
HARD ROGIN' TONIGHT
Shortie is back home with Ray Ferrari. Gamethread approves.
Ray Ferraro is currently the best color analyst in the game. Fight me.
Twitch
GAME STATS
SHOTS
| CANUCKS | Period | WINGIES |
| 6 | 1st | 3 |
| 10 | 2nd | 10 |
| 5 | 3rd | 15 |
| 21 | TOTAL | 28 |
PLAYER POINTS
| GOALS | ASSISTS | +/- | |
| MILLER | 1 | +1 | |
| PETERSSON | 3 | +3 | |
| HOGLANDER | 1 | +3 | |
| LINDHOLM | 2 | +3 | |
| ZADOROV | 1 | +1 | |
| Saves | Shots | SV% | |
| DEMKO | 27 | 28 | .964 |
Without Josh, entire 3rd line of Gnarly, Miki and Blueger were pointless and all were -1. That's why you don't don't mess with success, BC Ferries!
TACO TALK
Taco heaped praise on Hoagie. And his Lindy rightie center. And Demmers, of course.
Great 1st home game back from that grueling eastern road grind. But, not surprising. Really? Really. Nucks have not lost their first home game when returning from a road tour of 2 games or more. Wow! This isn't your last decade Nucks anymore.
Your 80 point, #1 in the NHL Nucks have played more road games than any other team. Not anymore. Zero eastern cabal games left. Only 5 games left outside the Pacific time zone. Of their remaining 27 games, 16 will be in the ROG.
The next one is on Saturday, HNIC game versus the Jetskis. So... another homer night in Canada. Winni is closer to CoTU, so they will be the big deal for the HNIC homer team.
Doesn't matter. What matters is another home win for the Nucks before they go back out on the road. A mini-hell trip. But, we're not there yet. Enjoy the moment, NM!
