Photo courtesy of San Jose Barracuda. Derrick Pouliot protects the puck against a Canucks player on January 14th.
By Titus Wilkinson (@TitusWisme)
SAN JOSE – In Derrick Pouliot’s return to the lineup San Jose came out flat at home and lost to Abbotsford by a final of 5-1.
The game took a little bit to get going with the first big play happening 6:24 into the game.
Wyatt Kalynuk threw a shot from the point towards the net and Kyle Rau perfectly deflected it to get his eight goal of the season and make it 1-0.
Less than five minutes after the goal San Jose took a penalty to give the Canucks a chance to go up two. However, as ended up being the story for the rest of the period the penalty kill was effective and killed off the power play.
The lone goal from Rau was the only goal of the period with the shots at the end of the period favoring San Jose 9-7.
To kick things off in the second Adam Raska and Guillaume Brisbois dropped the gloves just 1:09 into the period.
Seemingly feeling motivated by their teammates 5:53 into the second both Patrick Holway and Marc Gatcomb fought as well.
The second fight felt like it motivated the Barracuda and only a couple minutes after the fight Jeffrey Viel scored his seventh goal of the season.
It was a play right off the face-off were the puck came straight back to Viel and he ripped it past Artūrs Šilovs to tie the game up at one.
Only 45 second later though the Canucks had a response ready on a five-on-three power play as Linus Karlsson banged home his 11th goal on the campaign.
Later on that same power play which was now a five-on-four Phil Di Giuseppe one timed home a shot from the wing to extend the lead to two.
After the three straight goals from the Canucks the Barracuda were clearly reeling looking for a response.
13:02 into the second Abbotsford saw fit to tack on as San Jose made a terrible turnover behind their own net. On the turnover Danila Klimovich scored his eight goal of the season making the score 4-1.
Klimovich’s goal was the last of the period as the shots in total now favored the Canucks at 21-18.
The third period offered a major opportunity for San Jose to come back as their power play unit was given multiple chances.
In total the Barracuda had three power plays and could not score on a single one ending the night at an abysmal 0/6 on the PP.
With the score at 4-1 San Jose decided to pull their goalie but Arshdeep Baines scored on the empty cage to get his fourth goal of the season and essentially end the game.
At the end of the night Abbotsford lead in shots at 29-26.
The three stars of the game were: 1st: Christian Wolanin 2nd: Artūrs Šilovs 3rd: Jeffrey Viel
The Barracuda will continue their home stand tomorrow were they will look for redemption against these same Canucks at 1 p.m.
