Canucks Beat Rangers, Force Seventh Game

VANCOUVER, Canada -- The Vancouver Canucks just won't go away, and neither will the New York Rangers' Stanley Cup curse.Vancouver, 5-0 when facing elimination this postseason, forced a seventh game of the finals by winning 4-1 Saturday night and extended the Rangers' 54-year wait by three more days.The Canucks can make Rangers wait until next season again by winning the next game in New York. If that happens, it would go down as one of the biggest chokes in National Hockey League history, with the Rangers joining the 1942 Detroit Red Wings as the only teams to blow 3-1 leads in the finals."We felt good about our game coming out of New York and we thought we'd try to continue that same pattern," Canucks coach Pat Quinn said.Vancouver outshot and outhit the Rangers. In the first 2 1/2 minutes, Brian Leetch was hammered into the boards by Pavel Bure and Sergio Momesso. Bure, one of the smallest Canucks, also had big hits on Esa Tikkanen, Kevin Lowe and Alexei Kovalev in the period.If not for the acrobatic goaltending of Mike Richter, who finished with 27 saves, the Rangers would have been hopelessly behind.Instead, Vancouver led only 1-0 on Brown's power-play goal at 9:42. Trevor Linden beat Tikkanen on the faceoff, drawing the puck cleanly back to Brown at the left point. Brown's slap shot hit Tikkanen's skate and went over Richter's stick-side shoulder.The Rangers had more pressure on in the second period but Vancouver scored first. The Rangers got a power-play goal later in the period when Kovalev's shot from the right circle hit the skate of Murray Craven and deflected past Kirk McLean.Brown restored Vancouver's two-goal lead at 8:35 of the third period when his slapper from the right point found an opening between Richter's pads.Courtnall clinched it with 1:32 left scoring on a backhander that was in and out of the net so quickly that play continued and Messier scored for New York with 58 seconds left.