Lindholm Scores Two in Canucks Debut, Vancouver Overtakes Carolina 3-2

In six days as a Canuck, Elias Lindholm scored two goals in his first game in blue, green and white.

Lindholm got a couple of practices in before his Canucks took on the Carolina Hurricanes. He was excited and a little nervous, but he said that having the chance to talk to a few of the players and Head Coach Rick Tocchet at All-Star weekend helped him feel comfortable.

“I felt pretty good, I thought we played pretty good and obviously it was a tight game. It was a playoff-like game and they’re a good team, we’re a good team so not a lot of room out there but we stuck with it and got the two points that’s all that matters,” Lindholm said.

Tocchet said Lindholm’s hockey IQ was evident on the ice against Carolina and he quickly showed how valuable he is.

“Just at the end, that blocked shot, knowing when to be aggressive and when not to be, you can tell. When you go through the tape tomorrow, you’ll see hockey IQ plays,” Tocchet said. “He was great tonight for us.”

The game took on a frantic pace down the stretch as Carolina made a push trying to tie it up. The Canucks played team defence and Thatcher Demko shut the door at the end of the game to pull out the win.

“They [Hurricanes] like to throw a lot of pucks at the net and I thought after they only had nine shots, that’s hard to do against Carolina, they’re a heavy volume shot team. I thought we played behind them, we had a couple of lines that were tired, we got extended, but I think we had the bend don’t break type of defence,” Tocchet shared.

The victory earns Demko nine straight wins, tying Dan Cloutier for the Canucks record. Demko is 15-1-1 through his last 17 appearances, he stopped 22 of 24 shots he faced on the evening.

Game Recap

The first period saw Jordan Martinook get things going for the Hurricanes, scoring a shorthanded goal to give his team a 1-0 lead.

Lindholm took over the scoresheet after that, banking back-to-back goals on power plays in the first and second periods, both goals were tip-ins off shots from Quinn Hughes.

“It was obviously a little relief. There’s a lot of good players on this team and we played well today and it was a nice shot by Huggy there and obviously got a piece of it so it was nice to see it got in,” Lindholm said.

Carolina forward Sebastian Aho scored one from the point on the power play to even the score 2-2 heading into the second break.

J.T. Miller backhanded the go-ahead goal after Tyler Myers sent the puck down the boards and it bounced netfront off of Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetcov behind the net. Brock Boeser took a crack at it and J.T. Miller caught the rebound and found the nylon.

Next up, Vancouver heads to TD Garden to take on the Boston Bruins Thursday, February 8th at 4 p.m. PT.