Canucks-Predators: Period by period

Rob Davison will be the 6th defenceman in due to Salo's injury, not Nycholat. Good enough.
Just to throw a stat at you: Wellwood has 6 PP goals. That is 26% of the teams' total PP goals scored. There's my Wellwood plug for now. Had to get it in there.

This will be a semi-live blog. I'll analyze the game and the Canucks' performance after each period, plus throw out some stats as well.

Go Canucks!
I say we win 4-3.

PERIOD 1

Pretty good first period for the Canucks in every way except for one thing: taking too many penalties. When they were down 2 men Radek Bonk scored the tying goal.

Loving that Wellwood pass to Demitra for the 1-0 goal. Wow. Demitra showed no emotion after scoring that goal. I think he's keeping his cool because he has more up his sleeve.

Not only did Ohlund deck Bonk, but Davison destroyed Scott Nichol with a massive hit. That will be on the highlight reel all night. And then Jason Jaffray fights for the 2nd straight game, this time against the Rich Peverley Hillbilly.

Aside from the goals, I thought the Canucks came out strong and really took it to the Preds and sustained pressure throughout the period.

Shots: Canucks 10 Preds 7

PERIOD 2

Well it's pretty easy to analyze this period. POWER PLAY SUCKING. The Canucks had about 9:00 of power play time and scored ZERO goals. This may come to haunt them. Nashville is basically handing the Canucks the game but Vancouver isn't seizing advantage.
What was the last time you saw a 7:00 power play? That's what the Canucks got after Burrows decked JP Dumont and Jason Arnott attacked him. Yet Vancouver managed nothing. Wellwood had 2 glorious chances but couldn't capitalize. Bernier would have scored if he would have looked where he was shooting. He needed to roof that chance over Dan Ellis' pads.
The Canucks will start the 3rd period with 2:00 in PP time again, as Ryan Suter has taken a tripping penalty. The Canucks HAVE TO capitalize here.

Did someone tell Canucks players to be more ruthless? So many huge hits by them tonight.

Shots in Period 2: Canucks 11 Preds 4. The shots were not very high quality though.

Overall shots so far: Canucks 21 Predators 11. How the hell is it 1-1 right now?

PERIOD 3

Well. Dank Sedin makes a no-look pass to a pinching Edler and the Canucks FINALLY cash in on the PP 24 seconds into the 3rd. That was all they needed. Vancouver played solid in front of Sanford. When they faltered, the Sandman made huge saves to bail them out. A great game and a great effort.
There were the Ric Flair "Woooo's" after the win again. Great stuff. Sanford put a stamp on his status as the #1 backup tonight. The rest of the team, although they should have cashed in on the PP more, played an aggressive game to gain the win.
What's that? Calgary lost to the Canadiens tonight? Well I guess that means that we are ahead of the Flames by 2 points for the NW Division lead now.
How many highlight reel plays (hits and goals) were there tonight? Talk about classic entertainment value!
Wooooo!