The Utah Hockey Club will put a season-best five-game point streak on the line when it hosts the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.
The 4-0-1 spurt included four road wins and moved Utah within three points of Colorado for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference standings. It also put memories of a disappointing 7-9-3 start in the rear view mirror.
Utah’s only loss during the streak was 5-4 in a shootout to the visiting Minnesota Wild on Dec. 10. That was sandwiched by wins at Buffalo (5-2) and Philadelphia (4-2) and then a 4-1 victory at Colorado on Thursday and a 4-3 win at San Jose on Saturday.
“(Team confidence) is pretty high,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “I think there’s a lot of growth. Like I said in San Jose, I don’t think we had a great game for three periods (but) really liked how we bounced back in the third. So that’s good because it’s not every night you’re going to have you’re A-game but you need to find some way during the game to find your game and play good hockey and win games.”
Utah trailed, 3-2, at San Jose before Michael Carcone tied it midway through the third period. Clayton Keller scored a power-play goal with 44 seconds remaining for the game-winner.
“I like the way we played in the third,” Tourigny said. “When everything is sunshine and rainbows and everything is good, that’s one thing. But when you have adversity … the way we bounced back, that’s good stuff. That’s what you want to see from your team. Really proud of the boys.”
Keller said staying even keel is important.
“They always say you’re never as bad as you thought you were and never as good as you think you are,”said Keller, who is second on the team with 10 goals and 28 points. “I think that’s true. We’re playing the right way right now and we’ve just got to keep it going and not get too high, not get too low.”
Vancouver brings a 10-2-1 road record, best in the Pacific Division, with it to Salt Lake City and comes in off an impressive 3-1 bounce-back win over the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Monday.
Kiefer Sherwood scored his first career hat trick and 2023-24 Vezina finalist Thatcher Demko stopped 30 shots to pick up his first win of the season to lead the Canucks, who are six points behind the first-place Vegas Golden Knights in the Pacific.
Demko had a career-high 35 wins and five shutouts in 51 games last season but suffered a knee injury in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs that he said needed a “minor procedure” to repair, causing him to miss the first two months of the season. He lost his first two starts of the season, 4-3 in overtime to St. Louis on Dec. 10 and 5-1 to Boston on Saturday.
“Big one for me,” Demko said. “Certainly wouldn’t have liked 0-3 my first three back. It’s been a long time. It was a pretty tough (injury). I was a little rusty the first couple of games but starting to find it again.”
“Demmer is a good goaltender, just to remind everybody,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said tongue-in-cheek.
It’s the first game of a road back-to-back for the Canucks, who then play in Las Vegas against the Golden Knights on Thursday.
–Field Level Media
