Canucks, Red Wings look to build off streak-busting wins
DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings and Vancouver Canucks had one of their better performances in a while on Tuesday night.
It resulted in road wins for both teams that snapped winless streaks.
After snapping their respective winless skids, the Canucks visit the Red Wings Thursday at Joe Louis Arena.
Detroit (7-6-1) recorded a 3-2 shootout victory over the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 to end a five-game winless skid (0-4-1). Three of those defeats were by one goal and three occurred after the Red Wings scored first.
Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill called Wednesday night's win the team's most complete game in a long time.
"As we went into overtime I thought it was important for us to get two points just because I thought we played a pretty good game," he said. "We played some games where it's kind of gone the other way, so it was good for us to get two points here."
Andreas Athanasiou's breakaway goal in the third period tied the game at 2-2 and he scored the only goal of the shootout. He is tied with Thomas Vanek, Darren Helm and Dylan Larkin for the team lead with four goals.
"I thought he did a good job staying on it all night," Blashill said. "I thought he was engaged all night, I thought he was winning puck battles all night. When he's that, he's a very talented player. When he's competing at that high level this is what you get out of him. He's an excellent player that can break a game open out of nothing."
It was also Detroit's first win in Philadelphia since 1997 (0-11-1), when they beat the Flyers in two games in the Stanley Cup Final.
The Red Wings outshot the Flyers 35-25 on Tuesday and Jimmy Howard made 23 saves. Tomas Tatar got the other goal.
Forward Tyler Bertuzzi made his NHL debut after being recalled from Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League. He was plus-1, with a shot in 9:57of ice time.
Bertuzzi is the nephew of former Canuck and Red Wing Todd Bertuzzi.
While the Red Wings were stopping their skid, the Canucks ended a nine-game (0-8-1) losing streak with a 5-3 victory over the New York Rangers on Tuesday. The Canucks had been outscored 32-12 during the streak, which followed four straight wins to begin the season.
"It's a team game so everyone has to chip in," said Canucks left wing Loui Eriksson, who had zero goals in 13 games before Tuesday. "I think everyone did that tonight. We knew we were playing a good team."
Alexandre Burrows scored twice in the third period for Vancouver. Henrik Sedin and Sven Baertschi each had a goal and an assist for the Canucks, who had 11 players get a point.
"I thought we played the right way," said Burrows, who had not scored in 10 games. "We did a lot of good things defensively at the lines. We pressured a really good team, a fast team, and on the D side, we made some good plays, good reads."
