Canucks Spoil Ducks' Home Opener With 2-1 Shootout Win
ANAHEIM (AP) — Radim Vrbata and Alex Burrows scored in the shootout, and the Vancouver Canucks spoiled the Anaheim Ducks' home opener with a 2-1 victory Monday night.
Ryan Miller made 28 saves and Adam Cracknell scored in regulation for Vancouver, which beat the Ducks for just the third time in their last 12 meetings.
Sami Vatanen scored and Frederik Andersen stopped 24 shots for the Ducks, who are winless in the first two games of a season that includes Stanley Cup aspirations.
After the Ducks failed to score on a power play during their first taste of 3-on-3 overtime hockey, Vrbata and Burrows got stuttering, halting shots past Andersen, who stopped Burrows' shot before watching it trickle under him.
The Ducks lost their home opener for just the second time in six seasons.
Kevin Bieksa played nearly 24 1/2 minutes in his second game with the Ducks. Anaheim acquired the veteran defenseman from Vancouver last summer after he played 10 years with the Canucks, who drafted him in 2001. Bieksa was reunited with Ryan Kesler, the longtime Vancouver forward who moved to Anaheim before last season.
Vancouver improved to 2-0 on the road by winning the new season's first meeting between the Pacific Division's top two teams last year. Anaheim won its third straight division title, while Vancouver finished a surprising second before losing in the playoffs' opening round.
Anaheim was shut out in San Jose last Saturday in its opener before returning to Honda Center for its first real game on home ice since Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, when Chicago advanced to win the Stanley Cup. The Ducks have lost a Game 7 at home in three straight seasons, but they enter this season among the championship favorites after advancing an extra round into the postseason every year.
Both teams opened at a furious pace, with end-to-end chances throughout. After a scoreless first period, Vatanen got the Ducks' first goal of the season when his long, low shot went through Mike Santorelli's screen.
Cracknell evened it later in the period with a sharp-angled shot that somehow deflected off Andersen's shoulder and landed behind the goalie. The journeyman got his first regular-season NHL goal since April 4, 2013, and just the seventh of his 85-game NHL career.
Neither team had many chances in the scoreless third, although Miller used his mask to stop a late redirection by Carl Hagelin.
NOTES: A small group of vocal protesters gathered outside Honda Center to call for the suspension of Ducks D Clayton Stoner, who faces charges in Canada related to a 2013 grizzly bear hunt in Canada. ... Cracknell hadn't scored a goal in his last 49 regular-season games, although he got a postseason goal in 2014 for St. Louis.
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