Brashear Scores in Canucks’ 4-3 Victory

Pavel Bure waited 19 months to play his former team, the Vancouver Canucks. He’ll have to wait at least another year to beat them.

Vancouver scored three first-period goals, including Donald Brashear’s first since Marty McSorley hit him in the head with a stick eight months ago, and Ed Jovanovski added a fourth 2:20 into overtime Friday night to give the Canucks a 4-3 victory over the Florida Panthers at Sunrise, Fla.

“We weren’t doing much out there in the first period,” Panther Coach Terry Murray said. “We had a lot of real stupid mistakes. We weren’t skating. I don’t want to say it’s opening-night jitters. We’re professionals. We’ve got to be ready to play the game.”

Bure had a goal and an assist for the Panthers, who now might have another goalie controversy. Trevor Kidd lost for the eighth time in his last nine starts. Kidd and Mike Vernon split playing time for part of last season.

With Vernon gone, Kidd was named the starter this week despite being outplayed by newcomer Roberto Luongo in the exhibition season.

Luongo, taken with the fourth pick by the New York Islanders in the 1997 draft, went 3-0-1 in exhibition games. He gave up three goals in four games and posted two shutouts. Kidd went 1-2-0 and gave up 11 goals in five games.

He also struggled Friday.

“A couple of the goals were right under the bar,” Kidd said. “But we still got off to a slow start and got behind the eight ball. We just came out flat. There’s no real excuse for it. There was no energy on the bench and on the ice. Maybe this is what we needed--an early wake-up call.”

The Canucks scored three goals in the opening period--one off a turnover, one on a power play and another at even strength.

“We were very deserving of the win tonight,” Vancouver Coach Marc Crawford said. “We fought through a tremendous amount of adversity with getting in late last night and playing a team with a lot of emotion at the start of the game.”

Brashear’s first-period goal came on the same day McSorley was found guilty in a Vancouver, Canada, court of assault with a weapon for a stick attack on Brashear on Feb. 21.

“I was kind of hoping to get the first goal out of the way in the first couple of games of the year,” Brashear said. “It was nice to get it tonight. I’m the enforcer here, but I like to get my share of points.”

So does Bure.

Bure scored the Panthers’ first goal, ripping a one-timer past Bob Essensa from just inside the blue line. He added an assist in the third, setting up Igor Larionov’s putback with 15:48 to play.

Jaroslav Spacek tied the score with 4:43 to play.

Bure spent the first seven years of his career with Vancouver, but held out most of the 1998-99 season before being traded to Florida. He was injured for both meetings against the Canucks last season.

The teams don’t play again this season.

“It was the first game of the season, so I got really excited,” Bure said, downplaying the matchup against his former team. “It didn’t matter who we were playing. Now we have to play better.”

Nashville 3, Pittsburgh 1--Cliff Ronning, Vitali Yachmenev and Scott Walker scored as the Predators beat the Penguins in Tokyo, Japan. Jan Hrdina scored for Pittsburgh.

The teams play in Tokyo again today.

St. Louis 4, San Jose 1--Scott Young scored two goals and backup goalie Brent Johnson stopped 18 shots for the Blues at San Jose.

Lubos Bartecko and Marty Reasoner also scored for the Blues, who won the Presidents’ Trophy last season with a league-best 114 points but were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Sharks.

New York Islanders 3, Tampa Bay 3--Claude Lapointe scored two goals for the Islanders, including the game-tying goal midway through the third period at Tampa, Fla.

After Petr Svoboda put the Lightning up, 3-2, at 4:59 of the third period, Lapointe’s second goal of the game from in-close tied the score at 9:57.

Edmonton 2, Detroit 1--Rem Murray’s goal with 5:37 to play lifted the Oilers at Edmonton, Canada.