VANCOUVER
Toronto Maple Leafs Hoodies Womens , British Columbia (AP) — first NHL start could not have gone much better.The young goalie made 24 saves and Nino Niederreiter scored twice as the Carolina Hurricanes defeated the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 on Wednesday night.Nedeljkovic got called up this month when Curtis McElhinney sustained a lower-body injury. The 23-year-old netminder was 20-5-2 with the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League.His parents flew in to watch him play and Nedeljkovic picked them out in the crowd early. He was excited to get the opportunity to start, but kept some sage advice in the back of his mind.“One of my goalie coaches told me growing up, ‘Play every game like it’s the biggest game of your life so when you play the biggest game of your life it’s just another game.’ So that’s just kind of how I looked at today,” Nedeljkovic said. “Just another Wednesday night game and we came out on top.”Teuvo Teravainen had a goal and two assists for Carolina. Greg McKegg and Dougie Hamilton each added a goal and an assist as the Hurricanes snapped Vancouver’s five-game point streak in the final game for both teams before the All-Star break.Sebastian Aho had two assists, and Carolina took five points during a three-game road swing through Canada.“That wasn’t very good,” Vancouver’s Bo Horvat said. “We gave ourselves a chance there in the second period. And right after that, I think we just kind of took our foot off the gas.”Teravainen’s big performance came two days after the forward agreed to a five-year contract extension worth $27 million.Niederreiter has four goals since Minnesota traded him to Carolina for Victor Rask last week. The 26-year-old right wing said his new teammates have been creating opportunities for him to score.“They are great playmakers. You try to find the hole. You have to move around,” he said. “You can’t stand still and wait for something to happen. You have to open areas so guys can find you, that’s what has been working well.”Josh Leivo and Sven Baertschi scored for the Canucks. Jacob Markstrom stopped 29 shots.“They forecheck really hard and they were all over us in the second. They won the most battles. And their scoring chances paid off, too,” Markstrom said.“They wanted these two points more than we did.”Nedeljkovic’s first real test of the night came early in the second period after Canucks rookie Elias Pettersson made a no-look pass to Baertschi in front. Baertschi took the shot
Toronto Maple Leafs Hats Womens , but Nedeljkovic was there to gobble up the puck.Carolina opened the scoring 1:54 into the second with a power-play goal after Loui Eriksson was called for tripping. Markstrom stopped a shot from Teravainen but couldn’t corral the rebound and it popped out to Niederreiter, who put it into the empty side.Vancouver responded just more than a minute later with Troy Stecher getting a high pass to Leivo in front of the net. The left wing flicked it in for his ninth goal.The Canucks went up by one after some stunning stickhandling by Pettersson.The 20-year-old center started with a behind-the-back pass to Brock Boeser, who got the puck back to him down low. Instead of shooting, Pettersson sliced a pass to Baertschi and he tipped it in through a hole on Nedeljkovic’s blocker side.Less than two minutes later, McKegg tied it by beating Markstrom with a rocket of a one-timer. Carolina added three more unanswered goals before the end of the period.“We got down 2-1 and just stuck to the game plan, got pucks in deep, got pucks to the net and got on them,” McKegg said. “And it paid dividends in that period.”Tempers flared in the third, with two Canucks getting ejected.Fists started flying 6:30 into the period after Vancouver’s Antoine Roussel took an elbow to the face. The fiery Frenchman pushed through officials to go after Niederreiter and was handed minor penalties for cross-checking and unsportsmanlike conduct, plus a 10-minute misconduct.Erik Gudbranson joined Roussel in the Canucks dressing room about 10 minutes later.The defenseman tried to drop the gloves with Andrei Svechnikov after the Carolina right wing banged him into the boards. The play sparked a melee in front of the Hurricanes net, and Gudbranson was given a double-minor for roughing
Custom Toronto Maple Leafs Jerseys , plus a 10-minute misconduct.Both teams are now off for the All-Star break followed by a bye week.The Canucks sit just outside a wild-card spot in the Western Conference.“We can take this as a fresh start and come back mentally tough and play that much better,” Horvat said. “Over the break, it’s definitely going to be in the back of our minds that we weren’t good enough and we’ll have to push that much harder.”NOTES: Hurricanes left wing Michael Ferland was scratched with an upper-body injury. He left Tuesday’s game against Calgary in the second period. … Carolina leads the NHL in shots per game with 35.8. “We knew they were going to come out hard, be a fast team and put lots of pucks on net. We didn’t execute well enough to stop that,” Horvat said. … Boeser got his 18th assist. He has six points in his last five games.UP NEXTHurricanes: Back in action Feb. 1 when they host Vegas.Canucks: Begin a four-game road trip Feb. 2 in Colorado. SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Panthers are happy to have Roberto Luongo back in net.Luongo made 26 saves in his second start since missing nine games with a knee injury to lift Florida over the Edmonton Oilers 4-1 on Thursday night.The Panthers won two games in a row for the first time this season. They beat Winnipeg 4-2 in Finland last Friday.The victory also marked Florida’s first in its home rink this season.“I just wanted to keep building off the last game and make sure that I gave my team a chance to win,” Luongo said. “It’s nice you get rewarded with a few goals there in the second period and in the third.”Luongo made several big stops early in the first.“He was the best player on the ice tonight,” Panthers coach Bob Boughner said. “I was a little leery about us starting slow in the first five or 10 minutes. He stopped two or three big-time chances. That’s what he does.”Evgenii Dadonov, Nick Bjugstad, Jonathan Huberdeau and Colton Sceviour scored for the Panthers. Mike Hoffman and Vincent Trocheck each had two assists.The Panthers defeated Edmonton at home for the first time since March 8, 2002
www.canucksshoponline.com , a span of 10 games.The Oilers have lost three straight overall.“You never want to lose three in a row,” center Connor McDavid said. “Obviously, it’s frustrating but we have to regroup here.”Leon Draisaitl scored for the Oilers, and Cam Talbot stopped 29 shots.“I thought today we started well,” coach Todd McLellan said. “We had some opportunities early (but) Luongo made some good saves. We didn’t bear down.”The Oilers play three of their next four at home.“We have to come home now and put an end to this streak that we’re on,” McLellan said. “Good teams find a way to do that. We haven’t been able to do it on the road, so we have to do it at home now.”Edmonton closed to 2-1 on Draisaitl’s goal 23 seconds into the third period. Draisaitl redirected a pass from McDavid and beat Luongo up high.Huberdeau’s power-play goal from the left circle made it 3-1 at 3:43 of the third. Sceviour added an empty-netter with 49 seconds left.Dadonov gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead at 6:45 of the second. He took a backhand pass from Aleksander Barkov in front and slid the puck past Talbot while falling to the ice. Dadonov extended his point streak to a career-high nine games.Bjugstad found a loose puck in front and poked it into the net at 8:12 of the second.NOTES: Hoffman’s assist on Dadonov’s goal made him the fourth player in Panthers history to have a 10-game point streak. … D Mark Pysyk, who missed six games with an upper-body injury, was cleared to play but got scratched. … Edmonton has played six of its last eight games on the road.UP NEXTOilers: Host the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday.Panthers: Host the New York Islanders on Saturday.