VANCOUVER http://www.officialblackhawksproshop.com/authentic-adidas-gustav-forsling-jersey , British Columbia (AP) Eric Staal is having the type of scoring surge where it seems the puck finds its way into the net whenever he shoots.The Minnesota center scored the go-ahead goal in the second period and the Wild surged past the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 on Friday night.Staal has 11 goals in his last nine games, giving him 37 for the season – just three behind Washington’s Alex Ovechkin for the league lead.”A lot of people say, `Look how lucky he is,”’ Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. ”But in the end, it’s not luck. The good players do that.”Zach Parise, Matt Cullen, Marcus Foligno and Charlie Coyle -with an empty-netter – also scored for the Wild, who have won three straight and eight of their past 10. Minnesota leads Dallas by three points for third in the Central Division and trails Winnipeg by six points for second.Devan Dubnyk made 30 saves for Minnesota.The 41-year-old Cullen, the oldest active player in the NHL, had a goal and an assist – and has scored five of his 10 goals this season in the past 10 games. The Wild are currently headed for the playoffs, where the former Pittsburgh Penguins star has a chance to reach his third straight Stanley Cup final.”I get excited about what lies in front when the games get big and everything becomes more magnified and more important,” Cullen said. ”That’s why I still play. I do love this time of year.”Michael Del Zotto and Jussi Jokinen scored for the Canucks, who wrapped up a five-game homestand with a 1-2-2 record. Anders Nilsson finished with 31 saves.”It’s not hard to have a better effort than we had last game. That was terrible,” said Del Zotto, referring to a 2-1 loss to Arizona on Wednesday. ”We talked about it all year, we preach consistently and our effort and compete level has to be there every night.”The first-period scoring all happened in the first 1:42. Vancouver tallied 53 seconds in when Del Zotto’s hard wrist shot from the face-off circle slipped through Dubnyk’s pads, allowing the defenseman to collect his rebound and score on a wraparound.Parise was next, gaining control of a loose puck at the side of the Vancouver net and then deftly lifting it behind Nilsson’s shoulder to quiet the crowd.After Cullen missed on an easy goal with Nilsson out of position, Canucks forward Sam Gagner had a goal waved off for kicking.Nilsson robbed Cullen early in the second with a great glove save, but Cullen finally got his goal at 2:46, when Tyler Ennis made a nice cross-ice pass to Cullen streaking through the slot.Jokinen scored in his second straight game to make it 2-2 in the second. A shot by Erik Gudbranson rebounded right to Jokinen for the easy putback.Mikael Granlund’s wrist shot from a hard angle appeared to have bounced off Troy Stecher’s skate and in to make it 3-2. Staal, who was tied up with Stecher in the crease John Hayden Jersey , was credited with the goal.In the third, Dubnyk kicked out a pad to deny Jokinen in the slot, then had some luck when a puck trickled through his pads only to hit the post before defenseman Matt Dumba cleared it.After Coyle scored an empty-netter with 43 seconds left, Foligno banged in a rebound to put the game away.”It wasn’t good enough, but it was better,” Vancouver’s Henrik Sedin said. ”I thought that we wanted to be part of this game. Last game, I thought we stepped on the ice and thought it was going to be an easy game. Tonight, we battled.”NOTES: Defenseman Ben Hutton and forward Nikolay Goldobin were healthy scratches for Vancouver.UP NEXT:Wild: at Edmonton on Saturday night.Canucks: at Arizona on Sunday night. LAS VEGAS (AP) George McPhee’s endgame has always been about making the Golden Knights contenders.Strategic moves to keep winning.The veteran general manager has ridden his savvy all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, a stirring run by the first-year franchise and the first major sports team in Las Vegas. While the expansion draft gets most of the attention in attempts to explain the unusual success, the moves made by McPhee in late February, when the trade deadline came along, have proven just as important.”I wanted to wait as long as we could to determine what we had as a team,” McPhee recalled. ”At the trade deadline we felt it was a very good team. But it was getting thin, we were getting banged up, guys out of the lineup, we had other guys playing hurt. We wanted to do the very best we could for this team that was playing its guts out, to help it.”He began moving pawns across the NHL chessboard, starting with the acquisition of forward Tomas Tatar from the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for three draft picks: a first-round pick in 2018, a second-round pick in 2019 and a third-round pick in 2021. Tatar brought with him a contract worth $15.9 million through the 2020-21 season.While the Golden Knights did send Brendan Leipsic to Vancouver for Philip Holm, perhaps the biggest trade was the one for bruising forward Ryan Reaves from Pittsburgh, a move that included the Golden Knights acquiring 40 percent of Derick Brassard’s contract. Brassard going to Pittsburgh from Ottawa meant the talented center would not be going to Winnipeg – the team Vegas just beat in a rugged Western Conference final.Many wondered whether the trade would be worth it given Reaves’ notoriety for physical play. But Reaves brought some brawn to the Golden Knights and scored the game-winning goal in Game 5 at Winnipeg.”We just thought when we get into the games down the stretch and we’re in the playoffs, we can have a guy that can play the game right Authentic Jonathan Toews Jersey ,” McPhee said. ”Ryan did a good job of providing the line and getting us good, hard, safe minutes on some nights. Even though they’re not scoring like some of the other lines, they’re one of our better lines because they’re playing the game right. The other team isn’t getting chances, we’re keeping it deep on them and playing physical on them.”McPhee and coach Gerard Gallant also wanted to make sure the chemistry built over the first five months of the inaugural season wasn’t disrupted. And that meant keeping most of the lineup intact.That included unrestricted free agents David Perron and James Neal, both of whose names swirled in trade rumors, and at the beginning of the season were perceived as rentals until the deadline. Nobody saw the Golden Knights doing as well they did, so it was conceivable guys like Perron and Neal could’ve been sent to playoff contenders for future draft picks or younger, up-and-coming players by the deadline.As it turned out, Perron and Neal were already on a playoff contender and on their way to stellar seasons. Perron registered a career-high 66 points in the regular season, while Neal piled up 25 goals, scoring at least 20 in each of his first 10 NHL seasons. The only other current players to do the same: Jaromir Jagr, Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews and Thomas Vanek.”We knew that we weren’t moving anybody out,” Gallant said. ”We were happy with our lineup, we were happy with the group of players we got. We talked about adding players to our team, to make our team better and we definitely did that. But there was no thought about moving any of players out at that time. We had a great season, everything was going good and we wanted to make sure we had enough security for a playoff run and that’s what they did.”The Golden Knights await the winner of the East final between Tampa Bay and Washington, with Game 7 set for Wednesday night. The Stanley Cup Final begins Monday.—