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Roloson, Oilers rebound from bad loss to pound Canucks

Dec 5, 2006 - 6:02 AM VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Ticker) -- Dwayne Roloson and the Edmonton Oilers were not happy with their last performance and took it out on the Vancouver Canucks.

Four different players scored and Roloson made 36 saves for his second shutout of the season to lift the Oilers to a 4-0 victory over the Canucks.

After suffering a 4-0 loss to the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday, the Oilers snapped a three-game losing streak and won for the fourth time in 11 road games.

"It's a huge game for us, we needed to turn the tide around ... coming off the heels of three straight losses," Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish said. "We were pretty tight going into the game tonight and it was nice to get the break on the first goal."

After Shawn Horcoff opened the scoring at 8:53 of the first period, defenseman Daniel Tjarnqvist and Joffrey Lupul netted tallies in a 34-second span early in the second session to widen the lead to 3-0. Raffi Torres added his fifth goal of the season in the third.

Horcoff's tally was his first in his last six games. His last goal came in a 4-3 victory over Detroit on November 14.

"It was important, especially after the two penalty kills that we killed off right before it," Horcoff said. "I thought early in the game that was a big boost for us, and I thought after that we kind of turned the tides our way, and we kind of took over from there."

Petr Sykora collected two assists and Roloson stopped 11 shots in the first period, 19 in the second and just six in the third en route to his 20th career shutout. The netminder had been pulled in his last two starts after giving up nine goals on 40 shots.

"It's always important," Roloson said of the shutout. "I don't really worry about the last two games, you can't control that now. It's in the past, you've just got to look forward and be ready to give your guys a chance to win the next day and that's what I tried to do tonight."

"He's played fine," MacTavish said of Roloson. "You look at the stats and you see that he's been pulled in his last two games, but either game had nothing to do with performance. It was just a case of giving Rolly some rest."

Roberto Luongo recorded 14 saves for the Canucks, who have scored only 59 goals, the league's second-lowest total behind Columbus (55). Vancouver entered with a 2.12 goals-per-game average, the third-lowest average in the NHL, and has been held to three goals or less in 14 of its last 16 games.

"I think we'd all like to know what to do different," Vancouver captain Markus Naslund said. " Obviously, offense, the power play is not working and our offense is not what it should be. That's a big factor. We're getting shots again, but maybe we're not getting in deep enough in the scoring areas and screening and getting dirty."

Vancouver fell to 2-4-0 in its last six.

"If I compare this game to Colorado, we played a better defensive game tonight," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said. "The process was good tonight, we just couldn't score again."

The Oilers played without left wing Ryan Smyth, who suffered a fractured thumb in Saturday's loss to Columbus and right wing Ales Hemsky, who suffered a shoulder injury in the same game.