Ryan Miller gets 36th shutout as Canucks blank LA Kings 3-0

Ryan Miller and the Vancouver Canucks have already found a groove just three games into the regular season. Baertschi had the lowest even-strength ice time on the Canucks, which makes me wonder if he’ll be replaced by Jake Virtanen against the Kings, because size, grit, truculence, Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor grunt, toughness, construction sounds, character, good-ol’-Canadian-kid.

The under is 5-1 in the last six meetings between the Canucks and Ducks, who clash tonight in Anaheim at 10:00PM ET.

“We could have lost both games as well and it’s not like we dominated”, cautioned the Canucks coach. Ryan Miller made fifteen saves for the shutout, the 36th of his career.

The Canucks opened up a tight game by scoring twice in the second period, but could have doubled their goal total with sharper execution. Andy Andreoff centered Kyle Clifford and Jordan Nolan.

In the first two games of the season, Miller was solid. Edler would connect with a blast before the period was over.

This Canucks team will be one to watch moving forward as many of its question marks heading into preseason have been answered by emerging young players like Ben Hutton and Jared McCann.

That was it for scoring, even with a insane 3-on-3 overtime, complete with 4-on-3 power play for the Ducks, which turned into 4-on-4 overtime for the final 38 seconds when Alex Edler returned to the ice after his penalty. Radim Vrbata missed Brandon Sutter with a pass on a 2-on-1, and Sutter missed Jake Virtanen with a pass 2-on-0. The tally on Monday was the seventh in 85 career games for the 30-year-old right wing, who notched one assist in 17 contests with Columbus last season. They haven’t led in a game since then, losing their first three games, in differing and disconcerting fashion. It’s way down the list of problems the Kings appear to have.

– The Kings trailed only 1-0 in the second period when they were highly effective and killed 1:20 of a Vancouver 5-on-3 power play.

Brandon Sutter centred the third line with Derek Dorsett and Virtanen while Alex Burrows returned to the top line with Henrik and Daniel Sedin.

The most eventful moment of the opening 20 minutes is that Virtanen, the Abbotsford teenager, showed up to play them.

Kings’ offense slumbers again, team starts season with three regulation losses for first time since 1969-70. “We just kept it simple and I tried to throw a few bodychecks in the first period to get my feet going”.

These two teams have played three straight unders and five of six under.

But the buy-in that Desjardins is getting from top to bottom was the biggest story Tuesday. “It’s going to take a team effort for us to keep winning games like this”. After sitting out the first three Canuck games, he made his presence felt, literally, with early hits against Matt Greene, Tanner Pearson and Drew Doughty.

For the Canucks, too.

Up next: The Kings play host to the Minnesota Wild on Friday, the third game on their season-opening five-game homestand.