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The Vancouver goalie not only caught up, but he pushed his team
across the finish line in front of the Nashville Predators to earn
the Canucks two crucial points.
Making 34 saves, plus two more in a shootout, Lack enabled Vancouver
to pick up a wild 5-4 win Tuesday night at sold-out Bridgestone
Arena.
"We got down early and felt like we were working uphill the whole
game," Lack said. "These are two huge points. This building is tough
to play in."
The Canucks (45-27-5) seem comfortable in difficult road
environments. On the heels of a 4-1 win Monday over the Blues in St.
Louis, they improved to 24-12-3 away from British Columbia and moved
four points ahead of the Calgary Flames for second place in the
Pacific Division.
How they did it defied logic. Nashville (47-22-9) attempted a
whopping 71 shots and spent nearly 14 minutes on the power play,
including five that bridged the third period and the first 1:06 of
overtime after Canucks right winger Alexandre Burrows drew a
five-minute major and game misconduct for interference on center
Paul Gaustad.
However, Lack (16-11-4) erased that man advantage with nine saves,
including a stop on a snapper by defenseman Seth Jones with one
second left in regulation.
"He was our best player," Vancouver left winger Chris Higgins said
of Lack. "He can win a game singlehandedly for you, and he's done
that for us lately. He deserved our best effort."
Lack finished it off in the shootout, stopping centers Mike
Santorelli and Filip Forsberg. Meanwhile, center Nick Bonino and
right winger Radim Vrbata solved Predators goalie Pekka Rinne
(41-15-5), handing Nashville its second straight loss.
Despite the defeat, the Predators did manage to increase their
Central Division lead over St. Louis to four points, although the
Blues have two games in hand.
"I'm guessing our power play had 20 shots on net and probably 30
attempts overall," Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said. "I thought
we did a lot of good things on our power play and five-on-five, but
the goalie was good."
The Predators jumped out to a 2-0 lead just over eight minutes into
the game. Defenseman Cody Franson started the scoring with a
power-play marker at 4:30, followed by a breakaway goal from left
winger Taylor Beck at 8:15.
Vancouver rallied to tie it with two goals exactly two minutes apart
in the second period. Rookie right winger Linden Vey converted a
turnover into his 10th goal at 4:04, and right winger Jannik Hansen
followed with a slapper that evened the score.
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Nashville left winger Viktor Stalberg bagged his second goal of the
season at 19:30 with a wrister from the right faceoff circle, but
the Predators' second lead didn't last long.
Burrows got a stick on Jones' pass and jumped on the loose puck for
a short-handed breakaway, beating Rinne with a nice move for his
16th goal at 1:23 of the third period.
Higgins deflected Burrows' centering pass for a tiebreaking
power-play tally at 5:48 of the third, but Nashville equalized with
the man advantage at 14:57. Bonino's attempt at clearing the puck
struck center Mike Fisher in the leg and bounced past Lack for
Fisher's 19th goal.
That was the last thing that eluded Lack, even as the Canucks put
him in a bad spot by playing a man short at a critical juncture.
"We had a lot of penalties, but the boys did a great job in front of
me," Lack said.
Rinne made 21 saves for the Predators, who are trying to win the
first division title in their 17-year history.
"We should have taken this opportunity, especially with the power
play at the end, and scored," Forsberg said.
NOTES: Vancouver C Brad Richardson (ankle) and RW Zack Kassian
(back) missed their seventh and eighth straight games, respectively.
... Nashville D Shea Weber (lower-body injury) sat out his third
straight game and LW James Neal (upper-body injury) missed his ninth
consecutive contest. ... Canucks RW Radim Vrbata moved into 10th
place in the NHL with his 31st goal in Monday night's 4-1 win at St.
Louis. It's the second 30-goal season in Vrbata's career. ... Mike
Ribeiro's assist on D Seth Jones' goal Sunday gave him 45 for the
season, a franchise record for a Predators center.
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