Vegas was playing its eighth road game in the past nine, meaning they travelled before each of their past nine games, and finished 3-3-3 in that stretch.
“Tell you what, eight of nine on the road, to finish with probably the best game we've played in a long time, to finish that way and go home for a couple days, that's a good feeling for us,” Pietrangelo said.
Andrei Kuzmenko scored, and Thatcher Demko made 41 saves for the Canucks (15-8-1), who continued to alternate between wins and losses for a seventh straight game.
“It’s a learning lesson. They lost three in a row and we knew they were going to come at us,” coach Rick Tocchet said. “They’re strong on the puck. They’re Stanley Cup champs for a reason. They’re strong on the puck for a reason.”
Barbashev put Vegas ahead 1-0 at 4:46 of the first period on a wild sequence that started with Demko making a great save in tight off Eichel. But Eichel got a loose puck below the goal line and chipped a backhand centering pass into the slot for Barbashev, who backhanded it through Demko’s legs of as he pushed right.
“No one covered anybody,” Canucks forward J.T. Miller said. “Will, determination, things that are totally in our control. When we’re playing well, we do them, but we tend to do them once in a while, or every other night and the results are showing.”
Eichel finished off a 3-on-2 down low at 16:18 to make it 2-0. Nicolas Hague was spinning through the slot when he chipped a puck out of his skates to Barbashev at Demko's left post and he one-touched it back across the crease for an Eichel tap-in.
William Karlsson made it 3-0 on a power play at 11:27 of the second period, scoring low on the blocker side with a wrist shot from the right face-off dot after a pass from Eichel.
“Obviously a great start from [Eichel’s] line,” William Karlsson said. “It gave us the chance to play with the two-goal lead and then to top it off with an [assist] and the power play too, he had a great game. That whole line set the standard for us.”
