There's something about playing in Calgary that brings out the best in Vancouver's Mason Raymond.
The native of nearby Cochrane, Alta., had his second career hat trick on Wednesday night -- scoring at even strength, shorthanded and on a power play -- and added an assist to help the Vancouver Canucks rout the Flames 7-2 for their third win in a row.
"Maybe it's the home-cooked meal," said Raymond, who has both of his hat tricks in Calgary.
The four points are a career high for Raymond, who now has 7 goals in 23 games this season. He completed this one by scoring with 4:23 to play to make it 6-2.
"It's a lot of fun playing in front of your friends and family," Raymond said. "The team played really well and I had some good bounces tonight."
Daniel Sedin, Jeff Tambellini, Alex Burrows and Dan Hamhuis also scored, and Roberto Luongo made 18 saves as the Canucks improved to 13-7-3 and moved a point ahead of Colorado for the Northwest Division lead.
"As far as doing the right things at both ends of the rink, I think we are doing that right now," coach Alain Vigneault said. "Offensively we're generating and creating grade-A scoring chances and defensively we haven't been giving up much, so hopefully we'll continue here as we move on to Chicago."
Raymond's biggest goal came 1:03 into the third period, when he beat Miikka Kiprusoff with the Canucks playing shorthanded and protecting a one-goal lead. Vancouver then scored three more goals to blow open what had been a tight game through two periods.
Alex Tanguay and Tim Jackman scored for Calgary, which has five of its last seven at home.
"Seven goals... that's a pretty good kick at home," Flames coach Brent Sutter said. "What stings more is the way we handled our third period. That's unacceptable. That tells you that we have a lot of work to do. That is what bothers me more than anything."
The Flames seemed to have momentum heading into the third period after killing off a five-minute penalty. Calgary's Curtis Glencross drew a major and a game misconduct for cross-checking defenseman Keith Ballard in the face late in the second period. The Flames survived the lengthy penalty kill against the NHL's top-ranked power play to keep the score at 3-2 after two periods.
"You're in the game when it's 3-2 and with all the situations that occurred going into the third period, the cards were laid out for us to rise to the occasion," Sutter said.
After Burrows made it 5-2, Sutter showed his frustration putting out five defenseman -- Jay Bouwmeester, Brendan Mikkelson, Robyn Regehr, Anton Babchuk and Cory Sarich -- for the final 30 seconds of a third-period power play.
"We weren't doing anything on it," Sutter said. "I didn't think our forwards were working very hard on it. The first unit went out there and they never spent any time in the offensive zone whatsoever so I thought I'd give the defensemen an opportunity."
Material from team media and wire services was used in this report
