The season is still very young but the Vancouver Canucks have managed to make visitors feel unwelcome at Rogers Arena.
Defenceman Quinn Hughes scored two goals in a game for the second time in his career and Thatcher Demko stopped 22 shots for the shutout as the Canucks blanked the St. Louis Blues 5-0 Friday night.
Combined with an 8-1 win against the Edmonton Oilers in the season-opener, the Canucks have outscored their opponents 13-1 in two home games.
Demko made no apologies for the inhospitable behaviour.
“You look at the good teams around the league, it sucks sometimes going to play in those buildings,” said Demko, who recorded his fourth career shutout. “You know they are going to come out strong every game. That’s kind of what we want to establish here.
“We take a lot of pride playing in Vancouver. These performances at home start to compound.”
J.T. Miller scored shorthanded and added two assists for the Canucks (5-2-0) who won their third consecutive game.
Phil Di Giuseppe had a goal and an assist. Ilya Mikheyev scored once and Elias Petterson had two assists.
Hughes’s other two-goal game came on Feb. 1, 2020, against the New York Islanders. He now has three goals on the season.
“I’m just trying to shoot it more,” said the Canucks captain. “I feel a lot more dangerous than I have in the past.”
Goaltender Jordan Binnington stopped 30 shots for the Blues (3-3-1). St. Louis defeated the Flames 3-0 in Calgary on Thursday, but had little chance for a repeat result in Vancouver.
The Canucks pounced on the Blues early. They dominated the first period, outshooting St. Louis 19-3 and took a 1-0 lead when Hughes scored on a seeing-eye shot through traffic that beat Binnington on the glove side.
“We were ready to play,” said Hughes. “They were on a back-to-back and came out a little slow. We just jumped on them.
“I think we could clean up some stuff in the third. We got a little loose. For the most part it was a good game.”
Demko praised the improved defensive play of the Canucks.
“We don’t compound mistakes, which is huge,” he said. “If there is a breakdown, guys have composure and hockey IQ to get back in a good spot and make sure that second error doesn’t happen again.
“I can’t say enough about the team defence, the mentality that it takes.”
Blues centre Brayden Schenn was frustrated with his team’s effort. Besides being badly outshot, St. Louis took four penalties in the first period, one with the game just 17 seconds old, another with 33 seconds left.
“You’re going to lose hockey games, but you can’t be losing them like that,” said Schenn. “You’re not even giving yourself a chance.
“We have to clean that up. We can’t have an A game and then a D game. We’ve got to be consistent and we haven’t found that yet.”
Demko made one of his best saves early in the third period. Schenn made a nice move to get past the Canuck defence, then skated wide and fired a low shot that Demko stopped with his right pad.
Canucks coach Rick Tocchet praised Demko’s mental resiliency.
“Demko looked really big in net,” said Tocchet. “He didn’t have much action early but those are the hardest games to play for a goalie.
“In the second 30 (minutes) he got a lot of action. I credit him for staying in there.”
Vancouver broke the game open with three second-period goals, two of them 70 seconds apart.
Hughes scored his second of the night at 5:48 when he flipped a puck in front of the net that deflected in off the skate of St. Louis forward Kevin Hayes. Di Giuseppe scored his second of the season at 6:58 when he took a pass from defenceman Tyler Myers, skated between two Blues defencemen, and beat Binnington between the pads.
Miller made it 4-0 seconds after Hughes was sent off for slashing. With St. Louis trying to claw back into the game on the power play, Pettersson intercepted a pass, then fed Miller who scored on a breakaway at 8:52.
Mikheyev made it 5-0 at 6:35 of the third period, finishing off a three-way passing play with Pettersson and Andrei Kuzmenko.