Mason Raymond Gets Hat Trick, Blows Out The Flames

Added on Dec 02, 2010 by J Merrill in

NHL

The Flames shouldn’t take it personally. They just happen to play a short distance from where Vancouver’s Mason Raymond grew up, and he likes to get hat tricks in front of his friends and family. In fact, both of his career hat tricks have come in Calgary.”Maybe it’s the home-cooked meal,” said Raymond, who has both of his hat tricks in Calgary. He had four points in the game which is a career high for him, and in 23 games he has 7 goals. This one ended with a shot at 4:23 left in the game when he made the score 7-2.

The four points are a career high for Raymond, who now has 7 goals in 23 games this season. He completed this one by scoring with 4:23 to play to make it “It’s a lot of fun playing in front of your friends and family,” Raymond said. “The team played really well and I had some good bounces tonight.”

Robert Luongo played well in the net all night with 18 saves, and Daniel Sedin, Jeff Tambellini, Alex Burrows and Dan Hamhuis also scored. The Canucks improved to 13-7-3 and moved a point ahead of Colorado for the Northwest Division lead.

Vancouver Coach Alain Vigneault said after the game “As far as doing the right things at both ends of the rink, I think we are doing that right now. Offensively we’re generating and creating grade-A scoring chances and defensively we haven’t been giving up much, so hopefully we’ll continue here as we move on to Chicago.” Raymond seem to blow the game wide open at 1:03 when he scored shorthanded for the Canucks. Vancouver then scored three more goals to blow open what had been a tight game through two periods.

Calgary Flames coach Brent Sutter was frustrated with his squad. He said “Seven goals… that’s a pretty good kick at home. What stings more is the way we handled our third period. That’s unacceptable. That tells you that we have a lot of work to do. That is what bothers me more than anything.”

After managing to kill some big penalties the Flames looked like they weren’t going away after the second period. Sutter said “You’re in the game when it’s 3-2 and with all the situations that occurred going into the third period, the cards were laid out for us to rise to the occasion.”

After Burrows made it 5-2, Sutter showed his frustration putting out five defenseman (Jay Bouwmeester, Brendan Mikkelson, Robyn Regehr, Anton Babchuk and Cory Sarich) for the final 30 seconds of a third-period power play. “We weren’t doing anything on it,” Sutter said. “I didn’t think our forwards were working very hard on it. The first unit went out there and they never spent any time in the offensive zone whatsoever so I thought I’d give the defensemen an opportunity.”

Both teams play Friday when Vancouver (13-7-3, 29pts) faces the Blackhawks in Chicago (14-11-2, 30pts) and Calgary (10-13-2, 22pts) faces the Wild in Minnesota (11-11-2, 24pts.)