THE CANUCKS SHUTOUT THE MOOSE IN A TEDDY BEAR TOSS VICTORY
The Abbotsford Canucks continued their holiday homestand tonight against the Manitoba Moose for their first matchup of the season. Tonight’s game was a special one, as the Canucks held their 4th annual Teddy Bear Toss, where all the bears will be donated to the Archway Christmas Bureau.
Nikita Tolopilo started tonight in his second Teddy Bear Toss game, securing the win against Laval last season. He will go head-to-head against Kaapo Kahkonen.
After a week off to rest and practice, the Canucks had fresh legs coming into tonight’s game. The first line remained untouched with Tristen Nielsen, Nils Åman, and Linus Karlsson going strong. Phil Di Giuseppe returned to the lineup after being out with an injury for the last while, and he lined up next to Ty Mueller, and Jonathan Lekkerimäki. Nate Smith centered Chase Wouters and John Stevens, and Cooper Walker drew back into the lineup between Dino Kambeitz and Ty Glover.
At the backend, Elias Pettersson and Jett Woo kicked things off. Guillaume Brisebois and Kirill Kudryavtsev stuck together, and Christian Wolanin and Cole McWard closed out a perfectly curated Abby Canucks Teddy Bear Toss lineup.
With the looming Teddy Bear Toss over their shoulders, the pressure was on to set them free. Tristen Nielsen came close to holding this year’s title when he found himself on the breakaway but the shot went just wild. Ultimately, Jett Woo released the bears just under 10 minutes into the game when he stick handled his way through the 5-hole! Fans began launching their bears onto the ice in celebration, and the cleanup crew made its way out. Jett Woo gave the Canucks a 1-0 lead and despite a power play opportunity and some great chances nothing else found its way through and he held the lone goal in the first period.
The second period was another quiet with the Abby Canucks looking to extend their lead. The lone power play was dealt to Canucks once again just 3 minutes into the game, but the pucks didn’t find the right spot. With a scoreless second period looming, Jett Woo ripped a shot from the blue line that found Linus Karlsson in front of the net at just the right angle, where he was able to deflect it in for the lone goal this period. Despite outshooting the Moose 11-4 this period, Karlsson was the only lucky one, and the Canucks would start the third period up by 2!
Looking to close out the game with a win, Linus Karlsson came up big scoring his second of the game just 4 minutes in! A backdoor feed from Nils Åman set Karlsson up perfectly to secure his second of the game and extend the Canucks lead to 3. The Canucks did a great job of shutting down all of Manitoba’s chances, holding them to just 15 total shots the entire game. Nikita Tolopilo stopped all of them to record his second career shutout and the Canucks secured a 3-0 shutout victory to close out their Teddy Bear Toss game!
They will rematch tomorrow and look for their 8th win in 10 games! The team will then take a few days to practice before taking on the Tucson Roadrunners for their final two games before the Christmas break!
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