ON THE ROPES
Flames win puts Canucks on brink of elimination.
CALGARY — Their day began with first-line winger Alex Burrows being taken to hospital on a stretcher.
It ended with the Vancouver Canucks being put on life support.
Desperately needing a win, the Canucks couldn’t find one Tuesday, dropping a 3-1 National Hockey League playoff decision to the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
As that noted philosopher Grover of Sesame Street likes to say, it was a bad, awful day for the Canucks. They now trail the bestof-seven series 3-1 with Game 5 scheduled for Thursday at Rogers Arena.
The Canucks are just one loss away from another long summer.
“We win, it’s that simple,” said Vancouver winger Jannik Hansen. “We have to win. No more lifelines, second chances or whatever you might call them. We’ve got to win Game 5 and that’s it right now.
“That’s all we can care about, that’s all that we can have in our mind. It’s not the big task, it’s one game.”
The Canucks fell behind early, thanks in large part to a toxic combination of undisciplined penalties and bad penaltykilling.
It didn’t help that two of their top penalty-killers, Burrows and Brad Richardson, were out of the game.
Burrows was taken to hospital with what was reported to be a rib injury after the game-day skate. Richardson was scratched with an undisclosed injury.
The Flames struck for two power-play goals in the first period and got an even-strength goal in the final minute of the first to grab a 3-1 lead.
“We knew the refs were going to call this one a little bit different,” Hansen said. “We had been warned. Every guy in here knew that. We got caught on it. There’s no excuse for that and our penalty-kill, which has been so good throughout the entire season, let us down.”
That has been one of the stories of this series. The Flames have scored on four of 11 power-play opportunities. Calgary has at least one power-play goal in the last three games. The last time the Canuck PK gave up goals in three straight games was back in early February.
“You are going to take penalties in a game, especially in a playoff game,” said Vancouver defenceman Kevin Bieksa.
“It’s not like we were shorthanded the whole game. We have to kill those.”
Rookie Johnny Gaudreau opened scoring at 3:23 when he converted a cross-ice pass from defenceman Dennis Wideman. The goal came with Canuck winger Ronalds Kenins off serving a penalty for a boarding call on Sam Bennett.
Henrik Sedin answered five minutes later with a Canucks’ power-play goal. His attempted pass deflected off Calgary defenceman Kris Russell and through the pads of Calgary goalie Jonas Hiller.
But Jiri Hudler scored just over a minute later on another Calgary power play when he tipped a Wideman shot from the left circle past Vancouver goalie Eddie Lack. Nick Bonino was off serving a roughing minor at the time.
Bennett finished off a 3-on-2 rush at 19:18 of the first to make it 3-1.
“Apart from the penalties I thought we played a real good first period, but again we’ve got to keep our emotions in control,” Henrik Sedin said. “They are up 3-1 before the game starts.”