Miller had two shots on goal in 19:24 of ice time, killing penalties, playing on the power play and winning 11 of 15 face-offs in his return to Vancouver after being traded to the Rangers on Jan. 31. He played six seasons with the Canucks in which he played 404 games and led the team in points (437), game-winning goals (27), overtime goals (10) and short-handed goals (eight).<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lot of nerves. I was trying to move my feet and stay focused, and I really liked the way our line played in the first two periods,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI thought that we had a cycle game, had an honest game, and it’s an emotional game, for sure, but it actually went better than I thought. I actually thought I was going to be a little worse but made it through.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old forward and Rangers captain was recognized with a video tribute and received a standing ovation midway through the first period.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s just surreal,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don’t realize how lucky you are, and just really happy that my kids got to be here today and my wife. It means a ton to me, and I just feel super lucky to have that support in a hockey crazy city. It was a really special chapter of our lives here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thatcher Demko<\/a> made 23 saves for the Canucks (5-6-0), who have lost three of their past four games. Vancouver was playing its second straight game without top defenseman and captain Quinn Hughes<\/a>, who is day to day with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was tight,\u201d Demko said. \u201cThey were probably a hair quicker than us the first half. And then I thought we gave a pretty good effort there in the third to make a push and get back in the game. We had a ton of loose pucks kind of laying around the crease there and just couldn’t find one to put in the back of the net. But, yeah, it’s disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n Vancouver outshot New York 12-7 in the third period but couldn\u2019t solve the 39-year-old Quick, who spent his first 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Kings, winning the Stanley Cup two times with them and inspiring a young Demko.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was my idol. I grew up in San Diego, and he was kind of coming up through the ranks in L.A. and he was definitely a guy that I always idolized,\u201d Demko said. “I’ve been around him a little bit over the years, just kind of working out in the summer and things like that, especially early in my career, and he got the better of me tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n Zibanejad put the Rangers ahead 1-0 at 17:28 of the first period, taking a breakout pass from Adam Fox<\/a>, passing to Will Cuylle<\/a> at the offensive blue line, then beating backchecking forward Evander Kane<\/a> to the net to chip the backdoor return pass over an outstretched Demko.<\/p>\n \u201cQuick up by \u2018Foxy,\u2019 kind of worked ourselves into a 2-on-1 and \u2018Cools\u2019 made a great pass, so just try to get it on net and good to see the puck go in,\u201d Zibanejad said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miller had two shots on goal in 19:24 of ice time, killing penalties, playing on the power play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-248380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}