In their first game in the new year, the Vancouver Canucks started of with a big goose egg, the good kind! Although the Canucks didn’t necessarily outplay or outwit the Rangers, with stellar late-game goaltending from Roberto Luongo who posted his sixth shutout of the season, the Canucks played the role of survivor and outlasted the Rangers  by defending a one goal lead until late before putting it away.

The game started with great pace, the Canucks being well rested (compared to any time last month) and the Rangers looking to bounce back from a loss to the Flames the night before. As the pace slowed down, both teams began to take penalties but neither could convert each going 0-5 before the Canucks Jason Jaffray scored late in the third period on a deflection of a Willie Micthell point shot.

Neither offenses were spectacular as the Ryan Kesler checking line did what they do best and kept the Jagr scoring line in check while the Canucks were having trouble finding scoring chances. I’ve been parading the fact that this game was quite even, so it should not surprise anyone when I say both defenses were and bad at the same time. The Canucks d-men played average, but two of the six stood out for me. Aaron Miller and Lukas Krajicek looked quite out of place both making terrible mistakes on more than one occasion, and were lucky no to have paid for them in spades. The Canucks other defense, Roberto Luongo, played a vintage ‘Luey’ style game coming  up  big when he needed making big saves of Marcel Hossa and Martin Straka in the third period. The same cannot be said for Steve Valiquette who got the nod in net for the Rangers. Valiquette let in two suspect goals, the second of which (at the hands of Daniel Sedin, his 19th of the year) pretty much sealed the deal for the Canucks.

Another game against another team that the Canucks haven’t seen in Vancouver for who knows how many years goes by with the Canucks ending up on top. Fans who came to see goaltending star Henrik Lundqvist arrived disappointed, but fans who came to see super start Roberto Luongo left satisfied. The Canucks have another welcomed break until next Tuesday when they take on another far removed Eastern Conference team, the New York Islanders at GM Place.

Check out the box score here.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.