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Burrows' goal gives Canucks fourth straight win

Jan 3, 2007 - 6:21 AM CALGARY, Alberta (Ticker) -- Alex Burrows scored his first goal of the season at an opportune juncture for the Vancouver Canucks.

Burrows' goal at 15:29 of the second period turned out to be the decisive tally as the Canucks downed the Calgary Flames, 3-2, for their fourth straight victory.

The Canucks have scored 18 goals in their last four games after only netting nine in their previous five games.

"Against Calgary, they are tough, physical games," Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault said. "Players have to want to pay the price, and pay the price to make the right plays. For the most part, I thought we did a good job 5-on-5."

"We didn't start the game with enough team focus on being hard to play against," said Calgary coach Jim Playfair, whose club fell to 2-3-1 in its last six games.

Burrows netted the decisive tally when he backhanded the puck from behind the goal line past goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff to give the Canucks a 3-1 lead.

"It's definitely a weight off my shoulder," the left wing said. "I was thinking about getting more production offensively. I finally had bounces going my way."

"Alex doesn't get on the scoresheet a lot, but he does do a pretty good job penalty killing, and he does do a great job for us blocking shots," Vigneault said. "That's not on the scoresheet but that's important. But he got the winner tonight, and hopefully for him that's the start of a couple more goals."

Calgary sliced the lead to 3-2 at 17:23 of the period when Matthew Lombardi beat Roberto Luongo for his second goal of the game.

Luongo finished with 27 saves for his fourth consecutive victory.

"He keeps us in the games, and he picked up his play in the third period when we needed him," Vancouver defenseman Kevin Bieksa said.

Brendan Morrison and Trevor Linden also scored for the Canucks, who have beaten the Flames three times in the last eight days.

Vancouver defeated Calgary, 3-1, on December 26 and 6-5 in overtime the next night.

"The division speaks for itself," Vancouver center Marc Chouinard said. "For the longest time, it was three points from one to five. You're five, you win a game, you're number one. We didn't have a whole lot of success the start of the year. The wins against the Flames have been big wins for us."

"We move on and we get back to work tomorrow," Calgary right wing Jarome Iginla said. "Nobody feels good about this. I'm sure we'll play them sometime down the road and we've got to be better."