VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Elias Pettersson scored twice, Bo Horvat had a career-high four assists and the Vancouver Canucks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2 on Friday night for their second victory in three games under Rick Tocchet.
Tocchet took over as coach after Bruce Boudreau was fired Sunday.
Quinn Hughes had a goal and an assist to help the Canucks improve to 20-26-3. Ilya Mikheyev and Dakota Joshua also scored and Collin Delia made 23 saves.
Kirill Marchenko had two power-play goals for the Blue Jackets (15-30-3). Joonas Korpisalo stopped 29 shots for Columbus.
Hughes gave Vancouver a 2-1 lead midway through the firsy period on a long shot through traffic on a power play. Mikheyev scored with 45 seconds left in the first, unleashing a blast from above the faceoff circle that ricocheted off the end glass, hit Korpisalo’s skate and skittered into the net.
Joshua scored at 8:20 of the third on an errant pass. The forward looked to send a puck across the slot to Brock Boeser, but the puck hit Columbus defenseman Adam Boqvist in the leg and caromed into the net to make it 4-1.
Pettersson made it 5-1 with a power-play goal with 7:08 left.
UP NEXT
Blue Jackets: At Seattle on Saturday night.
Canucks: At New Jersey on Monday, Feb. 6.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports