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  Wednesday, Nov. 8 10:30pm ET
Cassels' hat trick lifts Canucks
 
  RECAP | BOX SCORE

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) -- Andrew Cassels isn't going to break any goal-scoring records because he's never been a player who crashes the net.

Steve Kariya
Canucks left wing Steve Kariya battles the Ducks' Vitaly Vishnevski, right.
The Vancouver Canucks center has been a 20-goal scorer three times in 10 full NHL seasons, but never tallied more than 22.

His first career hat trick in 743 NHL games in Wednesday night's 7-2 romp over the Anaheim Mighty Ducks was quite a surprise.

"Even though it's not a big part of my game, if you want to score goals, you've got to go to the net and shoot the puck. You're not going to score if you don't shoot," said Cassels, who scored all three goals in the second period after getting two goals and 11 assists in his first 14 games this season.

"I wasn't shooting enough and I wasn't going to the net hard enough. I know I've been trying to get the puck to Markus (Naslund) and Todd (Bertuzzi) a lot, but tonight Todd made some great passes to me, and it was just a matter of going to the net and let him make the plays."

Cassels scored his first goal at 2:37 of the second for a 3-1 lead. Cassels scored his next two goals 2:38 apart, giving the Canucks a 6-2 cushion with 1:21 left in the period.

On his second goal, he had his back to the net and got his stick on a difficult centering pass from Bertuzzi before spinning around and beating relief goalie Dominic Roussel. Moments later, Bertuzzi shook off Paul Kariya's check and threw a pass in front to Cassels, who completed his hat trick.

"It just shows you that if you go to the net and pay the price, you're going to score goals," Cassels said. "Our line was skating well tonight. And if you're going to the net, it creates a lot more room for the guy with the puck."

Steve Kariya, Peter Schaefer and Daniel Sedin scored on power plays and Adrian Aucoin also had a goal, helping extend the Canucks' road unbeaten streak to five games.

Paul Kariya scored a short-handed goal for Anaheim, marking the first time that he and his younger brother have scored in the same NHL game. They faced each other once last season when Steve was a rookie.

"I doubt he's happy about it right now, even though he scored a goal," Steve said. "But it was a big win for us. We wanted to get back on track and we had a good team effort. We wanted to keep the puck down in their end as much as possible."

Ladislav Kohn also scored for the Ducks, winless in five games. They have lost their last three meetings with the Canucks by a combined score of 18-4.

Steve Kariya, a healthy scratch in three of Vancouver's previous five games, scored his first goal in 11 games this season at 4:13 of the second period to drive Guy Hebert to the bench with a 4-1 deficit.

Hebert faced 17 shots before being benched. Hebert also was driven from the nets by the Canucks during an 8-1 drubbing last season.

"This team needs to want to win every night," defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky said following a postgame team meeting. "We have to find a way to win and we need to show up. The bottom line is that we're professionals and we need to do our job."

Paul Kariya was serving a holding penalty when Schaefer opened the scoring 4:27 in.

Anaheim's German Titov was given a major and automatic game misconduct for boarding Schaefer from behind at 7:05, causing the left wing to bleed. Four minutes later, Vitaly Vishnevski took a slap shot that Paul Kariya deflected through Felix Potvin's pads to tie it. The short-handed goal was the 13th of his career.

But the Canucks, who were outshot 4-1 during their five-minute power play, regained the lead a minute later when Aucoin used Vishnevski as a screen and beat Hebert high to the stick side. The goal came one second after Titov's penalty elapsed.

Game notes
Cassels' hat trick was the first by a Vancouver player since Dec. 4, 1998, when Markus Naslund victimized Dallas. It was the first against the Ducks since Pavol Demitra's on Feb. 12 of last season at St. Louis. ... Kariya's short-handed goal was Anaheim's first in a home game since March 7, 1999, when Steve Rucchin helped beat Detroit. ... Anaheim is 0-for-17 on the power play in its last four games, after scoring at least one power-play goal in six consecutive games and 11 of its first 13 contests.
 


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