Jake DeBrusk had a goal and an assist and Thatcher Demko recorded his first shutout of the season as the Vancouver Canucks snapped a two-game losing skid with a 3-0 victory over the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday.
Brock Boeser and Drew O’Connor scored and Filip Hronek had two assists for the new-look Canucks, who were playing with an extra spring in their step after adding four new players in a pair of trades on Friday.
Demko stopped 25 shots for his ninth career shutout as he played one of his best games since returning from a long injury absence in mid-December.
Goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 28 of 30 shots for the Avalanche, who had won their previous two games. Blackwood had his shutout streak snapped at 146:55 after he recorded shutouts in his previous two games.
The Canucks were missing leading scorer and captain Quinn Hughes, who sat out his second straight game with an undisclosed injury.
The Avalanche hit three posts in the opening period, but both teams failed to score.
DeBrusk put Vancouver on top at 4:26 of the second. Hronek took a shot and the rebound popped up into the air to DeBrusk, who gloved it down and jammed it past Blackwood for his team-leading 19th goal of the season.
The Avalanche had the Canucks running around in their own zone halfway through the second, but Demko was brilliant. In one series, the Vezina Trophy finalist from last season made a couple of stops without his stick, but his best came seconds later when he dove across the crease to stop a one-timer from Artturi Lehkonen.
Boeser scored a power-play goal at 8:20 of the third to make it 2-0. Hronek started the play with a long pass to DeBrusk up the left wing. DeBrusk skated in and made a saucer pass over the stick of Colorado’s Samuel Girard to Boeser, who finished off the two-on-one.
O’Connor scored into an empty net with nine seconds left.
–Field Level Media
