Canucks Break-Out, Rout Habs

You could feel the negativity in the air, you could sense the hand hovering a few inches over the panic button - until the Canucks came out and dominated the Montreal Canadiens at GM Place on Wednesday night. It was a slump-busting night as Mason Raymond, Ryan Kesler and Steve Bernier scored their first goals of the season.

Kesler opened the scoring on a beautiful breakaway feed from Alex Edler, as he slid in behind the Montreal defense and beat Carey Price with a nifty forehand deke. Mason Raymond blew by Hal Gill and cut to the net to increase the Canucks lead to 2 - 0, the Canucks capitalized on their first Power Play of the night to make it 3 - 0 with Steve Bernier netting a tap in off a feed from Daniel Sedin.

The Habs made it interesting - at least for a little while - until the Canucks big guns took the game over. Henrik Sedin scored back to back goals to give the Canucks a 5 - 1 lead, Mikael Samuelsson and Alex Burrows also both scored their second goals of the season to cap a 7 - 1 win for Vancouver.

All eyes were on Roberto Luongo heading into this matchup with Montreal, he made some key saves, especially on the Penalty Kill, and despite the 1 questionable goal he allowed to Andrei Kostitsyn off the half boards on the Power Play, Luongo seemed to start getting his game back on track.

On a lighter note, Rick Rypien stunned the GM Place crowd as he dropped the gloves with Canadiens giant Hal Gill. Rypien was landing some decent punches while holding his own against the much taller, heavier, and stronger Hal Gill. Check out the fight below:



Our Take: The Canucks needed this. They needed every second of this. Finally finishing their chances was critical for this group, and obviously having Roberto Luongo back on track was key as well. He'll need to cut down on the questionable goals, but he made some significant saves tonight at important times for this team. Vancouver has some time off now, as their next game is Sunday against Marc Crawford and the Dallas Stars, before they head out on the road to Calgary.