Three third-period goals broke a tie and carried the Carolina Hurricanes to a 6-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena on Tuesday night.
Logan Stankoven opened the scoring for Carolina with a wrist shot at 4:44 of the first period. Linus Karlsson answered for Vancouver at 10:10, but Nikolaj Ehlers restored Carolina's lead at 12:09 off passes from Jackson Blake and Stankoven. With two seconds left in the opening period, Jonathan Lekkerimaki scored on the power play to tie the game 2-2. Nicolas Deslauriers recorded his first goal of the season at 2:26 of the second period to put Carolina ahead 3-2, but Max Sasson evened the score again for the Canucks at 13:07.
Deslauriers broke the 3-3 deadlock with his second goal of the night at 4:07 of the third period, scoring on a wrist shot set up by Bradly Nadeau and K'Andre Miller. Ehlers added an unassisted wrist shot at 10:22 to extend the lead to two. Stankoven then sealed the win with an empty-net goal at 17:57. Ehlers and Stankoven each finished with two goals and an assist, while Blake contributed three assists.
Pyotr Kochetkov made 14 saves on 17 shots to earn the victory in net for Carolina. Leevi Merilainen stopped 38 of 43 shots for Vancouver as the Hurricanes held a 44-17 advantage in shots on goal. The Canucks finished 1 for 2 on the power play, while the Hurricanes went 0 for 5 with the man advantage.
The victory improved Carolina to 8-2-1 on the season and completed a two-game regular-season sweep against Vancouver. The Canucks dropped to 2-8-1 and extended their winless streak to eight games (0-7-1).
Carolina will visit the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night. Vancouver will host the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday.
