Canucks score 5 in 1st in win against Senators

VANCOUVER -- Elias Pettersson scored twice during a five-goal first period for the Vancouver Canucks in a 6-3 win against the Ottawa Senators at Rogers Arena on Tuesday.

Pius Suter had two goals and an assist, J.T. Miller had a goal and an assist, and Thatcher Demko made 35 saves for the Canucks (24-10-3), who bounced back from a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday and are 8-1-2 in their past 11 games.

“Probably one of our best periods in about a month. It was awesome,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said of the first. “Everybody was really connected.”

Vladimir Tarasenko scored twice, and Claude Giroux had a goal and an assist for the Senators (14-19-0), who were beginning a five-game road trip.

Anton Forsberg was pulled at 16:58 of the first period after giving up four goals on 13 shots. Joonas Korpisalo made 11 saves in relief.

“You're not going to win any games in the NHL giving up five goals in the first period, plain and simple. Especially not against a team like Vancouver that's having a lot of success this year,” Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot said.

Ottawa is 3-4-0 since Jacques Martin took over as interim coach for D.J. Smith on Dec. 18. It had won three of its past four coming into Vancouver.

“It was a lesson learned about how hard you have to compete,” Martin said. “We just need to do things quicker. We need to be harder on pucks, and it's not one or two players. We can't sustain. We win one game and then we revert to where the team was before. … We have to increase, raise our level of compete.”

Ian Cole scored his first goal of the season on a screened point shot 2:14 into the first period to put Vancouver ahead 1-0.

Suter made it 2-0 at 12:39. Sam Lafferty's deflection of Tyler Myers' point shot hit off the end glass, and Suter gloved it down quickly and tapped the puck into an open net at the right post.

Pettersson pushed it to 3-0 at 16:34. His sharp-angle shot from below the goal line landed behind Forsberg, and as the goalie tried to clear it off the line, it deflected in off the stick of Pettersson, who had skated around the net.

Miller made it 4-0 just 24 seconds later when his redirection deflected in off Ottawa defenseman Jake Sanderson in the slot.

“It was a good first,” Miller said. “Couple of lucky bounces went our way”

Pettersson made it 5-0 at 17:53 with a power-play goal. He partially whiffed on a one-timer only to have it deflect five-hole off Sanderson’s stick.

“Nice to have a lucky bounce go in. I thought we moved well and had some looks,” Pettersson said. “I’ll take it every day.”

Martin wasn’t interested in using lucky bounces as an excuse for the result.

“At some point, you hit a point in a season or in your career that you can't look at excuses anymore,” Martin said. “They have to decide what they want to be. It's not like there's a lot of first-year kids on this team. They've been here, so to me they’ve got to change. The biggest thing they got to change is the mindset.”

Giroux made it 5-1 at 1:31 of the second period, taking a pass from Brady Tkachuk on a 2-on-1 and toe-dragging Ilya Mikheyev before scoring past Demko, who was moving the wrong way.

“They score one, you just got to keep playing like we scored one,” Giroux said. “If they score one, it doesn't matter, you got to keep playing the right way and not start changing your game. They had a few bounces, but that's hockey.”

Tarasenko scored 37 seconds into the third period to make it 5-2, tapping in a backdoor pass from Giroux, who had outwaited a sliding Filip Hronek on a 2-on-1.

Tarasenko then cut it to 5-3 at 17:29 when he knocked in a loose puck at the side of the net with Korpisalo on the bench for the extra skater.

“It should’ve been an easier night for [Demko],” Tocchet said of the final two periods. “We lost our staples. We didn’t go through people, we were backing up, we were pinching when we shouldn’t. Those are the things I don’t like.”

Suter scored his second goal 13 seconds later on a chip in from the blue line that bounced past the glove of Korpisalo for the 6-3 final.

“It's very frustrating right now but I believe in this group,” Giroux said. “We have the potential to win 10 in a row if we do it the whole game, we're consistent in it and we got everybody doing it. I strongly believe we can get on a roll.”

NOTES: Canucks forward Phillip Di Giuseppe left at 6:26 of the first period with a lower-body injury. Tocchet said he will be “out for a while.” … Vancouver defenseman Quinn Hughes had an assist to extend his point streak to five games (one goal, six assists). … Canucks forward Teddy Blueger had his point streak end at seven games (three goals, six assists).