Christmas might still be two weeks away but Henrik Sedin is already in the giving mood.
The Canucks centre dished out a trio of assists to three different goal scorers in a 4-3 Vancouver win at GM Place Saturday.
With those helpers -his 499th, 500th, and 501st career points-, Henrik moved into a second place tie with Marian Gaborik for the NHL scoring lead with 41 points.
It also extended the Sedin's point streak to six games, in which the twins have combined for 24 points
Most importantly though, the three-point performance helped the Canucks win their second straight and keep the Minnesota Wild from surpassing them in the standings.
"[Henrik]'s been great for us no question about that," said Daniel Sedin, who scored the game's first goal. "Confidence is one thing, and he tries to make plays all the times, and a lot of times it does work."
The elder of the twin rounded out the first period assisting on Mason Raymond's 11th goal this season -tying a career high-, and Alex Burrows' 10th.
"Obviously every time the team coming in playing the back-to-back, you want to jump on them early," said Burrows, regarding the tired Minnesota team that played the night before in Calgary. "[Josh Harding]'s a great goaltender. We were able to get a few shots upstairs on him, and we knew he was a butterfly goalie so it worked out well."
Vancouver finished the game with 29 shots on the Wild backup, while Roberto Luongo made 38 saves at the other end to improve to 14-10 on the season.
The five-goal first period also saw two other tallies by Minnesota defencemen Shane Hnidy and Greg Zanon.
With both teams going scoreless in the second period, Ryan Kesler got his seventh of the season and his second in three games to give Vancouver some breathing room in the third.
The Kesler winner, one of his patented wrist shots, rounded out the Canucks three powerplay goal on the night, as they finished 3 for 5 on the man advantage, while killing off all four penalties against.
"We've been working at it quite a bit lately," said coach Alain Vigneault referring to the powerplay. "Tonight, the difference was that we were able to bury some of those chances."
The win keeps the Wild, who had amassed a 8-1-1 in the 10 games heading into Saturday, three points behind the Canucks in the Northwest standings.
Despite the loss, Minnesota dominated in the circle, winning 71 per cent of the draws, led by Eric Belanger, who won 14 of 17 faceoffs.
Meanwhile, Kyle Wellwood was a healthy scratch again for the second game in a row. This time, he didn't even come out for the warmup skate prior to the game.
