Canucks Come Back to Leave St. Louis Feeling Blue

How quickly things change in the NHL. 

Two weeks ago the Canucks were in disarray, Sundin was struggling, the team was stumbling and in a tailspin that they seemed unable to get out of. Fast-forward two weeks to February 10; Suddenly the Canucks have caught fire, and chalked off a nice three-game win streak to move above the cut in the playoff race. 

The Canucks defeated the Blues 6-4 in a very wild game that saw the Canucks twice come back from two goal deficits to win for only the third time all season when trailing after 40 minutes.

Vancouver fell behind late in the first when Wagner and Boyes scored 1:29 apart to put the Blues up 2-0. Mats Sundin then took matters into his own hands as he scored twice in the first eight minutes of the period; however, in between Keith Tkachuk got his 17th of the season, and after the second the Canucks still trailed by one. 

The Canucks showed alot of resiliency as they fought hard in the third period and were able to draw several penalties. At 7:58 they were able to capitalize on one of those penalties as Ryan Kessler scored his 15th goal of the season and his sixth in four games. 

However, the drama was far from over. Less than two minutes later, Canuck killer Andy Mcdonald put the Blues ahead for the third time in the game with a snap shot past a shaky Roberto Luongo. That still was not nearly enough in this contest as Burrows scored just over two minutes later to even things up at 4, setting the stage for Jannik Hansen to score the game winner with less than five minutes remaining after receiving a lucky bounce of Carlo Colaiacovo to fire home his sixth of the season. 

Demitra iced the game with an empty netter to make the final 6-4 in favour of Vancouver. 

The Canucks are really starting to come around and it's a real good sign with things heating up in the west. Ryan Kessler now has six goals in his last four games while fellow line-mate Mats Sundin has really earned his paycheck of late, as he now has four goals in his last three games. Alex Burrows scored his 13th of the season which is a career high for him. The biggest problems Vancouver had in this one was the penalty kill that has now allowed at least one power play goal in 13 of their last 14 games. 

Not far behind is Roberto Luongo, who while not getting much support on the back end, has nonetheless allowed ten goals in his last three games, very uncharacteristic for Luongo. However, on the opposite side, the power play has come to life in a big way of late as they are clicking at almost 50% efficiency in their last two games.

This was the first game of a three game road trip for Vancouver, as they now head to Phoenix in a critical encounter with Wayne Gretzky's greatly improved Coyotes. With the win, the Canucks improve to 25-20-8 on the season, and move back into seventh palce, a point ahead of ninth place Columbus.