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Canucks rally late to defeat Predators

Oct 22, 2006 - 3:18 AM NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Ticker) -- In their return home after a spotless three-game road trip, the Nashville Predators saw their winning streak come to an abrupt end.

Brendan Morrison tied the game with less than two minutes to play in regulation and Lukas Krajicek scored in overtime to lift the Vancouver Canucks to a 4-3 victory over the Predators.

The win was Vancouver's third in its last four games and snapped Nashville's four-game winning streak.

"It gives you that little extra confidence when you are in that situation again," Morrison said. "If you are down one in the third, you can draw on that experience."

Krajicek netted the game-winner 2:32 into overtime, taking a pass from Matt Cooke on the left side and whistling a shot from the faceoff dot over Nashville goaltender Tomas Vokoun's shoulder on the short side.

"This is my biggest goal so far," Krajicek said. "When we are behind, we got to keep working hard and hope for the best. Tonight it worked out."

"We worked extremely hard last night (a 3-2 win at St. Louis) and we came back, and we worked hard from the opening buzzer tonight, even though we were playing back-to-back," Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault said. "We were down 3-2 with a few minutes left. We thought we could tie it up and we did. Then we found a way to win in OT."

Morrison forced overtime by scoring at 18:20 of the final session. Jan Bulis and Taylor Pyatt also scored for the Canucks, who got 37 saves from netminder Roberto Luongo.

J.P. Dumont, Martin Erat and Scott Hartnell scored for the Predators, who went 0-for-6 on the power play.

"On the power play we had some chances, but Luongo stood on his head," Nashville coach Barry Trotz said. "When he had to, he played extremely well. We did some good things in the game, but we did some bad things, like taking three penalties in the last nine minutes."

The Canucks struggled again on the power play, going 0-for-7. Vancouver is just 7-for-53 (13.2 percent) this season with the extra skater.

Afterwards, Trotz looked at the positive side despite the painful defeat.

"That was four games in six nights for us, and we got seven of eight points," he said.

Luongo, who has allowed six goals in his last three games after surrendering six in a loss to San Jose on October 13, was impressed with Vancouver's grit. "These are big points, especially on the road," he said. "It shows a lot about the character of our team."