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Pyatt, Cooke, help Canucks rally past Kings

Apr 4, 2007 - 8:13 AM VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Ticker) -- With a division title within their reach, the Vancouver Canucks looked to Matt Cooke.

Cooke scored the decisive goal on a power play as the Canucks rallied to beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-2.

Brian Smolinski, Taylor Pyatt and captain Markus Naslund each tallied for Vancouver (48-24-7), which remained three points ahead of Minnesota (46-26-8) for first place in the Northwest Division. The Wild beat the Edmonton Oilers, 3-0, on Tuesday.

"We realized that we needed this win to win our division," Naslund said.

The Canucks can clinch their second division title in three seasons with a win vs. the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday.

"We're one win away from clinching the division and we're going to try to do it on Thursday night," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said.

On a scramble around the Kings net, Cooke jammed in a rebound under the pads of goaltender Mathieu Garon to give Vancouver its first lead at 3-2 with just 52 seconds left in the the second period.

The Canucks trailed 2-0 early in the middle session when Smolinski took a pass from Henrik Sedin in the slot and rifled the puck past goaltender Mathieu Garon at the 5:12 mark to cut the Canucks' deficit to 2-1.

"The Kings were a team that wasn't playing with any pressure and they have a lot of good young players", Vigneault said.

"We didn't start the game very strong," Pyatt said. "We took a couple penalties and they took advantage of them. But we came out hard in the second and took the game to them."

Pyatt then tallied when he received a pass from Jan Bulis at the doorstep and slapped the puck past Garon to knot the contest at 2-2 with 6:34 left in the period.

"A great play by Buly," Pyatt said. "I was just trying to go to the net and he made a great pass and I was fortunate to find the back of the net."

"I think we were doing good the first period and beginning of the second," Garon said. "After that, we took too many penalties and we put ourselves in trouble."

Naslund added an empty-netter with 32 seconds remaining and Roberto Luongo stopped 15 shots for Vancouver, which is one point away from tying its highest point total in a season, set in 2002-03.

Derek Armstrong and Dustin Brown scored power-play goals and Garon made 27 saves for the Kings, who have lost four straight on the road.

"We're going to keep plugging ahead and hopefully, in the not too distant future, we will be the team that's finding ways to win the one-goal games," Kings coach Marc Crawford said.