A tired Vancouver Canucks team had its five-game winning streak snuffed out by the Columbus Blue Jackets in a shootout Monday afternoon.
Kirill Marchenko scored the only goal in a four-round shootout to lift the Blue Jackets to the 4-3 win. The single point earned by Vancouver moved the team atop the NHL standings, for the time being.
After Marchenko slid the puck between Casey DeSmith’s pads, Columbus goalie Elvis Merzlikins blocked Pius Suter’s shot to help the Blue Jackets end a three-game losing streak.
Columbus rallied three times in regulation with Dmitri Voronkov’s second goal of the game with 9:03 left in the third period forcing the overtime.
Yegor Chinakhov also had a goal and Merzlikins made 27 saves.
J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson each had a goal and an assist for Vancouver. Conor Garland also scored and DeSmith had 41 stops for the Pacific Division leaders.
The afternoon game at Nationwide Arena on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States was the final stop on the Canucks season-long seven game road trip that saw the team go 5-1-1.
“I loved that we got a point,” Miller said. “[DeSmith] was unreal. It could have been a lot worse than it was. We’ve done a
good job as a group lately. That was kind of a dud for us.”
Miller got credit for his 20th goal on a deflected puck that tumbled past Merzlikins in the first period.
Thirty seconds later, Chinakhov was waiting for a perfect pass from Johnny Gaudreau from behind the goal line and beat DeSmith in close. Garland’s one-timer from the slot gave Vancouver a 2-1 lead late in the first.
Voronkov deflected in a long shot by Adam Boqvist to tie the game early in the second period. On a power play later in the period, Pettersson beat Merzlikins over the glove from the right dot for his 23rd goal of the season and eighth in the last six games.
Miller’s 20th goal of the season made him the third Canucks player with 20 or more goals this season, joining Brock
Boeser (27) and Pettersson (23).
A blizzard prevented the Canucks from flying out of Buffalo Saturday to Columbus. Instead, the team bussed to Toronto on Sunday and flew from Pearson International Airport to Columbus.
The Canucks next host Arizona on Thursday night to start a five-game homestand.
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