Coyotes let lead slip away, fall to Canucks in OT
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Markus Granlund's first goal as a Canuck gave Vancouver fans a much-needed taste of home-ice victory.
Granlund scored 1:42 into overtime to help the Canucks beat the Arizona Coyotes 3-2 Wednesday night.
Granlund scored on a 2-on-1 with Jake Virtanen. Granlund was acquired from the Flames in a trade on Feb. 22 for Hunter Shinkaruk.
Those home victories have felt far and few between this season for the Canucks, who are now 12-16-5 at Rogers Arena.
"It's big for us and for the fans. It's a good win here on home ice," Granlund said.
Radim Vrbata and Luca Sbisa also scored for the Canucks. Jacob Markstrom stopped 32 shots for Vancouver.
"You come into the room and you notice everyone is happy, everyone is smiling and that's the way you want it to be when you come in after a game, especially at home," Markstrom said. "And the fans are happy, you want to play for them too. There's a lot of pride going on right now."
Kevin Connauton and Tobias Rieder scored for the Coyotes, who have lost nine of their last 10 games. Louis Domingue made 28 saves.
The Coyotes led 2-0 in the second period but couldn't hang on.
"It's certainly frustrating," said Alex Tanguay, who set up Rieder's power-play goal. "When you are up 2-0 on the road you have to make sure you play solid, you don't get lost, you play the position.
"The outcome is very frustrating."
Vancouver had three power-play opportunities in the first period and outshot Arizona 15-10, but it couldn't get one past Domingue.
The Coyotes, meanwhile, capitalized on their first power-play chance early in the second. Michael Stone passed to Alex Tanguay, and he found Rieder unchecked in the slot to make it 1-0 at 2:57.
Arizona jumped ahead 2-0 about 5 minutes later when Anthony Duclair, controlling the puck behind the net, dished it out to the faceoff dot, where Connauton wristed it over Markstrom's shoulder.
Vrbata put Vancouver on the board at 11:55. He took a pass from Yannick Weber, split the defense and went backhand over Domingue for his 13th of the season and first at even strength since Dec. 18.
"I thought we battled back, especially when we went down two zip," Vancouver coach Willie Desjardin said. "That goal by Vrbata was a big goal to get us going here. He made a good play on it and Webber made a good pass."
The Canucks tied it with 2:22 left in the second. Ben Hutton controlled the puck at the top of the faceoff circle before feeding it over to Sbisa, who ripped a slap shot from the point.
After half a period of end-to-end action, the third slowed down while both teams looked to avoid making a fatal error that would lead to a go-ahead goal. Markstrom made a big glove save on Shane Doan's high wrist shot from the slot with 90 seconds left.
Markstrom also stopped a breakaway attempt by Max Domi in OT.
The Canucks have won 3 of 4 meetings with Arizona this season. All four games were decided by one goal.
Notes: The Coyotes were without points leader and star defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson (upper-body injury). ... Vancouver was missing top center Henrik Sedin (upper body) and defenseman Chris Tanev. They were injured Saturday against the San Jose Sharks.
