VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Grant Fuhr continued his mastery of Vancouver with 20 saves and Harry York scored the game-winner midway through the third period as the St. Louis Blues ended the Canucks' four-game winning streak with a 4-2 victory Friday night.
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| Blues goaltender Grant Fuhr makes a glove save off Markus Naslund during the first period. |
York's power-play tally with 11:48 remaining gave the Blues a 3-1 lead. He deflected Al MacInnis' blast from the top of the right faceoff circle and the puck tipped off goaltender Corey Hirsch's right pad and the goalpost before crossing the goal line.
"(Igor) Kravchuk threw it across the blue line and I saw Harry York off to the corner," MacInnis said. "I thought he was going to tip it straight in, but he figured he tipped it over Hirsch."
Vancouver climbed within a goal with 1:32 to go when Pavel Bure took a drop pass from Trevor Linden and ripped a one-timer from the top of the right circle that beat Fuhr to the stick side.
But Stephane Matteau sealed the Blues' second win in seven games by scoring into an empty net with 1.7 seconds left.
"I thought basically we played the road game tonight and if we had been able to crank it up and get the kind of effort that we've had to this point, that by and large the game was ours for the taking," said Vancouver coach Tom Renney. "We just turned it up a little too late."
St. Louis grabbed a 1-0 lead in the final minute of the first period. Former Canuck Geoff Courtnall made a lunging play at the blue line to keep the puck in the Vancouver zone, then passed ahead to Brett Hull, who was left alone in the slot. He waited for Hirsch to commit, then wristed the puck through his pads for his seventh goal of the season.
"I didn't really see it because I was in (deep)," Hull said. "I always like to be the last guy coming out because you never know when plays like that happen. They have an offensive team and ... they left me all alone and that's exactly what happened. I didn't really see the play, I just saw (Courtnall) on the ice and he had the puck, so I yelled for it."
Craig MacTavish doubled the Blues' lead at 7:02 of the second period, deflecting MacInnis' blue line wrist shot between Hirsch's pads.
"MacTavish did a good job of winning the faceoff and Tony Twist got it back. We wanted to get some traffic in front of the net and when you have big guys out there like (Rob) Pearson and Twist, we are going to cause some havoc," MacInnis said. "MacTavish did a great job to get his stick on it and I think he just tipped it down by Hirsch."
Hirsch denied Hull on a short-handed breakaway later in the period and the Canucks finally solved Fuhr during a power play at 1:42 of the third. Alexander Mogilny worked a give-and-go with Markus Naslund, who slid the puck back to Mogilny at the right goalpost for his sixth of the season.
St. Louis broke a three-game road losing streak and avenged a 5-3 loss at Vancouver on Oct. 12.
Linden said the Canucks' five-day layoff since their last game Saturday hurt them.
"I think we came out and tried, but our continuity wasn't there," he explained. "We weren't clicking. You could see when we finished that stretch in that last game against Calgary, we were playing well. Guys were zipping and playing with one another. It's frustrating when you sit around for five days though. You lose your edge and we didn't have that edge tonight."
Jon's 3 stars:
1. Corey Hirsch
2. Geoff Courtnall
3. Al MacInnis
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