Lankinen, Canucks edge Blackhawks in shootout

CHICAGO -- Kevin Lankinen made 31 saves and stopped all four attempts he faced in the shootout for the Vancouver Canucks, who rallied for a 3-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center on Friday.

“I kind of like shootouts where it’s a battle mindset, one against one,” Lankinen said. “Just been doing a lot of that in practice. Thankfully we were able to put one in tonight. We got better as the game went on. A little slow start, but got to admit it was a little tough travel, back-to-back with some long travel, so I was proud of how the guys came in and battled to the end and got the win.”

Jake DeBrusk and Max Sasson scored for the Canucks (3-2-0), who were coming off a 5-3 win at the Dallas Stars on Thursday. Brock Boeser scored the deciding goal in the fourth round of the shootout.

“The first back-to-back, so you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Vancouver coach Adam Foote said. “It was a real heavy game in Dallas. I felt like the first period we didn’t have our legs. When that happens, sometimes it takes a while to get into it. We made it a little bit harder than we had to, but I like the way we kept going and came back again.”

Ryan Donato and Tyler Bertuzzi scored, and Spencer Knight made 30 saves for the Blackhawks (2-2-2).

“They’re on the back half of a back-to-back, we go up 2-0, that’s when you just can’t give them life, and I thought we got passive in the second period, way too passive as the period went on,” Chicago coach Jeff Blashill said.

Donato gave the Blackhawks a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal at 12:41 of the first period. Andre Burakovsky skated to the bottom of the left face-off circle and passed to Donato, who tapped the puck in from the side of the crease.

Bertuzzi made it 2-0 at 19:14 when he put the rebound of a shot by Sam Rinzel past Lankinen, who had lost his stick.

"I thought we created a little bit and had our scoring chances,” Bertuzzi said. “Things are going to happen, people are going to be moved around so early in the season that everyone is going to get a chance with each other."

Vancouver cut the lead to 2-1 on a power-play goal by DeBrusk at 6:49 of the second period. Conor Garland got the puck along the goal line and quickly passed to the top of the crease, where DeBrusk chipped it past Knight.

Sasson tied it 2-2 at 13:42. With the Blackhawks forward Jason Dickinson on his back, Sasson took a feed from Filip Hronek and tapped the puck into an open net for his second goal in two nights.

“I thought their goalie played well,” Foote said of Knight. “You’ve got to get to the net, you’ve got to get some dirty goals and dig, for sure. I’d like to see us not give teams two goals to start games. We’ll see if something else can change.”

Bertuzzi appeared to have given Chicago the lead back at 14:48 of the third period, but the officials waived the goal off because of goaltender interference. The Blackhawks then challenged the ruling, but the call stood after a video review.

NOTES: The Canucks have won 11 straight games against the Blackhawks … Canucks forward Teddy Blueger made his season debut after missing the first four games with an undisclosed injury. Blueger, who replaced Aatu Raty, was minus-1 in 12:57 of ice time. … The Blackhawks activated forward Landon Slaggert off injured reserve. He has not played this season because of a lower-body injury. He could make his season debut against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday.