Willie Mitchell and the Vancouver Canucks came into Chicago struggling to find their game on the road, but the bruising Canucks blue liner had no problem finding Jonathan Toews with his head down in the neutral zone. Toews got caught watching the puck on his stick as Willie Mitchell exited the penalty box and knocked Toews off of his feet. The Hawks youngster stumbled to the bench, left the game and did not return.
As for the Canucks, they fell behind on two occasions in this hockey game and battled back to get a victory, their first away from GM Place. Duncan Keith opened the scoring for Chicago and Steve Bernier scored his second goal in as many games to tie it up for the Canucks. Late in the second period Duncan Keith made a heads up play to find Troy Brouwer at the side of the Canucks net who was able to re-direct a shot past Roberto Luongo.
The Canucks captain played well in the third period, as the Canucks were forced to kill off a long 5 on 3 and Luongo wasn't overly busy, but made some timely saves to keep the deficit at 1. After Willie Mitchell's big hit, the Canucks seemed to get some life as Ryan Kesler took a hit of his own to make a nice pass to Michael Grabner who scored his first NHL goal on a rocket slap shot that beat Antti Niemi post and in.
3 minutes later, Brian Campbell turned the puck over in his own zone, Mikael Samuelsson came up with the puck and snapped a shot by the young Hawk goaltender to give the Canucks a 3 - 2 lead, the goal went on to be Samuelsson's second game winner of the early season.
The Canucks get set to face the winless (the only winless team in the NHL by the way) Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night at home. Note the 4PM faceoff at GM Place.
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