Canucks Postgame: Luongos beat Schneiders in Overtime

There was a lot of talk heading into Tuesday night’s Devils-Canucks game about Cory Schneider and Roberto Luongo. Those guys will, for better or for worse, be linked to each other for a long time to come. Whenever one guy does very well or very poorly, people will make jokes suggesting that the Canucks should’ve stuck with the other guy. That’s a foregone conclusion.

So the 3-2 overtime win by the Canucks surely didn’t do anything do change that, especially since it’s just one game, and both guys played very well. But what it did do was provide the Canucks with 2 needed points in the standings – with the schedule about to get tougher, it was nice to bank a 3rd straight victory – and a much better all-around performance to build off of.

Read on past the jump for a quick recap of the game.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the start the Canucks got off to in this one. Overall they didn’t get outplayed or anything per se, but I thought that they did a really poor job of defending in their own zone. They were far too willing to play back, and that soft play in the defensive zone cost them on Jaromir Jagr’s goal to open the game. 

The 2nd period was kind of reminiscent of the 3rd period from Sunday night’s win in Calgary, as the Canucks really #flippedtheswitch and took their play to another gear. An unfortunate series of bounces – first off of the referee, and then off of Dale Weise – led to a cheap goal for Patrik Elias, but after that, it was all Canucks.

In fact, in that period the Canucks directed 22 shots on net to just 8 for the Devils, and had 8 scoring chances of their own while blanking the opposition. Daniel Sedin beat Schneider on a lucky bounce of his own off of a Devils defenseman, and then Edler made no mistake after being sent in by Daniel (with an assist to Ryane Clowe, who had trouble getting off of the ice creating an odd man advtange).

The 3rd period was pretty uneventful for the most part. In overtime, Jason Garrison scored his 3rd goal of the season from the point (which actually a seeing-eye shot of sorts that took a nasty re-direct from Marek Zidlicky in front of the net). For those keeping score at home now, Garrison needs just 12 goals in 78 games for Cam Charron to owe me a pitcher (we bet on an Over/Under of 14.5 to start the season). I feel pretty good about that right now, acknowledging that 2 of the 3 have been very favourable for me. But hey, at the end of the year they all count the same, right?

The Sedins were freakin’ awesome in this game, yet again. I noted that Daniel logged 23:18 in regulation tonight, which I can’t remember him doing in a long, long time. That makes 4 straight games to start the year where he has ecclipsed the 20-minute mark. Apparently, I was right that he hadn’t done it in a while:

Finally.. Schneider was excellent in this game. He made some big-time stops – with the most notable ones being sprawling to rob Henrik on a rebound, and stopping Hansen on a breakaway. He certianly didn’t disappoint in his return to Vancouver. He received a nice ovation from the fans before the game, but once it started, it was all business as the Rogers Arena faithful chanted his name. The Canucks play in New Jersey on the 24th, by the way.