The Canucks put forth one of their best performances of the season to end a miserable road swing on a high note

Something had to give... Two teams both on streaks, in opposite directions, and while looking back at this one on the schedule you likely had 2 points penciled in for Dallas (who have owned the Canucks lunch the last couple seasons), Vancouver was having none of that Sunday afternoon in Big D. Rather than starting the game down a goal like they did in Carolina Friday night, it was the Canucks who started the scoring, with Utica Comets call up Reid Boucher starting them off early and they never looked back.

From Boucher’s 2 goal performance, to Jake Virtanen’s breakaway beauty,

to Alex Edler and Eric Gudbranson turning in a solid performance as the Canucks best D pair, it was a top to bottom great game from the boys, that sure as hell looked like a response to the comments from Jacob Markstrom after the loss in Carolina Friday. And to his credit, Markstrom was lights out, for his 2nd career shutout.

Not only have the Stars owned the Canucks of late, especially at home, but you have to go back to 1999 and current Sportsnet650 colour guy Corey Hirsch to find the last Canucks goalie to get a shutout in Dallas.

Canucks News... Sportsnet has a chat with Travis Green on his coaching career 55 games in... With the insane number of injuries the Canucks have had to endure this season, you’d think this would trickle down to Utica, with the Comets regularly having to send players up to the parent club. So it’s been a pretty encouraging sign that Trent Cull has taken his team from 6th place in mid-December to 2nd, thanks to some solid goaltending from Thatcher Demko and Richard Bachman. They continued their winning ways yesterday with a 4-3 win over the Belleville Senators

The Comets are now 10-0-2 in their last 12 games...

Around the NHL... Sidney Crosby became the 95th in NHL history to score his 400th career goal... The NHL’s Department of Player Safety served up another knee-slapper yesterday, as they came down “hard” on career predator Dustin Brown, giving him a paltry one game suspension for this knee on knee hit against Tampa’s Mikhail Sergachev...

Calgary picked up a huge win yesterday in their quest to stay in the top 3 in the Pacific with a come from behind 3-2 win over the NY Islanders. Matthew Tkachuk scored 2 in the 3rd, including the GWG with less than 2 minutes in the game, but it could be a costly win for the Flames, as they lost Mike Smith to injury with 1.1 seconds left in the contest. David Rittich will start the next game for the Flames while Smith’s injury is evaluated... Buffalo’s chances of finishing at the bottom got a boost as they will be without Jack Eichel for up to 6 weeks following a high ankle sprain in their 4-2 win over Boston Saturday.