No Daniel Sedin? No problem for the Canucks so far. Brother Henrik played a stellar game offensively, yet his line did struggle defensively, as Hank and Alain Vigneault will attest to. He may have cycled a lot less than he's used to, but he still managed 2 assists. So did Mikael Samuelsson. The Canucks got goals from 3 different players: Kesler, Burrows and Mitchell, and this is what is going to have to happen in order for them to maintain any form of success with Daniel Sedin out of the lineup for this amount of time.

I really thought the team as a whole answered the bell tonight. They kept their game quite simple, crashing and banging the Stars all night (Guillaume Desbiens leading the charge there) and not giving up too many quality chances on Roberto Luongo. It's the type of Canucks game I've been waiting for. That being said, the Canucks were outshot 35-25, and sure, it was "sloppy". What does it matter? They won.

It never should have gotten to overtime though. The Canucks were mostly in control until 2 things happened:

-Late in the 3rd period, Mason Raymond missed a glorious chance on Marty Turco after Turco flubbed a passing play and let the speedster walk in alone on him.

-Moments later, Alex Burrows stopped moving his feet on a backcheck and his man, Victoria native Jamie Benn capitalized on a cross-crease pass to not only score his first NHL goal, but also the game tying goal.

It had to go to a shootout, which had me worried, I will be honest. Dallas has some great snipers. But Kyle Wellwood made Turco look silly on his play and Kesler exposed Turkey with a mean shot high to the corner. The Stars could not solve Luongo once in the shootout. Like someone mentioned in the game thread, it was good to get a win here, because it would be so damned pleasant waiting 5 days for the next Canucks game had they lost.

The Canucks are looking better every game now and have a 2-3 record. So much for the world coming to an end.

To be blunt...I am really sick and tired of Sami Salo. He left the game with a lower body injury after only a couple of minutes played. We could make a drinking game out of this. Time cannot go by fast enough when this guy's contract expires and we can rid ourselves of his fragile frame. What? We still have him for another season yet? Dammit! I swear he uses plastic eating utensils at home. Maybe he should just use his hands.

BOXSCORE

HIGHLIGHTS

CANUCKS PLAYERS POST GAME REACTION

COMPLETE SHOOTOUT: