Craig Anderson is a self-proclaimed gear head, so much so that he pays tribute to his beloved Corvette with the company racing logo on his goalie helmet. In racing metaphor, Anderson is off to a top fuel dragster start in his first season with the Avalanche.
Stopping all 35 shots he faced, Anderson led the Avs to a 3-0 shutout of defending Northwest Division champion Vancouver on Saturday afternoon at the Pepsi Center. In helping the Avs get out to a 2-0 start, Anderson has stopped 73 of the first 75 shots he’s faced (.973 save percentage) and has taken a Victory Lane twirl both times afterward as the game’s No. 1 star.
“I just don’t think too much. I just read and react,” said Anderson, whose shutout was the eighth of his career.
Part of what goes into the job of goal- tending is pure body language. The best always seem to have an attitude that nothing bothers them, and that’s what coach Joe Sacco has noticed about Anderson.
“What strikes me is his confidence,” Sacco said. “He seems to be very confident in there. Certainly, I can’t go into detail about his technique and things like that, but his confidence is very noticeable. He’s seeing the puck well and seems square to the shooter.”
The Avs were somewhat flat during much of the first period, with the Canucks often all over them in their own end. But Anderson’s 12 saves, and a goal by Wojtek Wolski at 14:52, changed the momentum. Paul Stastny scored a pretty power-play goal at 15:16 of the second, redirecting Milan Hejduk’s pass past star Canucks netminder Roberto Luongo. And veteran Darcy Tucker scored his second goal in as many games, early in the third.
By game’s end, the frustrated Canucks gooned things up, with two fights happening in the final 13 seconds.
“As the game went along, we got better,” Tucker said. “Our youthful legs got going in the third period. We were coming off an emotional opener, coming into a day game, and it could have been tough, but we played hard. We’re going to play hard every night and give ourselves an opportunity. That’s all you can ask.”
Anderson, whose father, Richard, raced GT cars in his home state of Illinois, had one of his best sequences in the third period, when he continued to make saves after losing his stick. Despite a smallish crowd (13,416), the building was loud at the end with chants of his name.
“They had a lot of chances when they tried going backdoor and just missed. They could have easily had two or three goals that way. We were just lucky they didn’t connect on some of those plays,” Anderson said. “But our guys did a good job of cleaning up the rebounds, and we got better as the game went on. We have a few days off now and then go on the road for a while, so these were two big wins for us.”
Canucks forward Henrik Sedin said of Anderson: “He played a fantastic game tonight. He’s been good in Florida the last couple of years.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
Avs Recap
The Post’s three stars
1. Craig Anderson.
Avs goalie stopped all 35 shots he saw.
2. Paul Stastny.
Avs top center had a goal and an assist.
3. Wojtek Wolski.
Scored his third goal of the year and added an assist.
What you might have missed
The Avs are off to a 2-0 start for only the second time since moving to Denver. The other time was 2001-02.
Up next
At Nashville, Thursday at 6 p.m.
Adrian Dater, The Denver Post
