Unlike goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, many of his Pittsburgh Penguins teammates didn't have a legitimate reason for taking Saturday night off.

Fleury sat in civvies at Vancouver's General Motors Place with a broken left ring finger and watched the hometown Canucks tee off on his rookie replacements, John Curry and junior-aged Alex Pechurski.

Curry, making his season debut, might have thought he was in for a light night after facing just one shot in the game's opening eight minutes. But the Canucks went to work after NHL scoring leader Henrik Sedin caught Curry leaning off the post later in the first period.

Alex Burrows notched a short-handed goal before the buzzer and Vancouver unloaded for four goals in the second, chasing Curry in the process, en route to a 6-2 victory to snap a three-game losing skid.

"We got a lot of traffic in front of their goaltender and we just started throwing pucks at the net in the second period, and we capitalized on some lucky bounces," Canucks forward Ryan Kesler told Scott Oake of Hockey Night in Canada.

Curry reportedly was feeling ill earlier Saturday and considered a questionable starter. He probably didn't feel much better after surrendering five goals on 15 shots.

But the 25-year-old could only be faulted for two of the goals as Jannik Hansen and Mikael Samuelsson redirected shots and Burrows made a pretty forehand-backhand move on a breakaway after Penguins defenceman Sergei Gonchar couldn't corral a bouncing puck at the Vancouver blue-line.

After Evgeni Malkin broke an 11-game goalless drought at 7:32 of the first period, Sedin tied the game 1-1 with his league-leading 65th point. Standing behind the goal line to the side of the net, he saw Curry turn his right shoulder and shot the puck, which banked off the netminder's blocker and elbow and into the net for his 21st goal of the season.

Back-to-back turnovers

Samuelsson fired the game-winner 82 seconds into the second period by tipping a Mason Raymond shot for his 16th goal following back-to-back turnovers by Pittsburgh, including one from Malkin.

Penguins coach Dan Bylsma lifted Curry at the 4:29 mark after Hansen and Willie Mitchell scored in a 52-second span to make it 5-1.

"It was just one of those nights," Penguins forward Bill Guerin, who was minus-3 on the night, told HNIC. "We ran into some bad bounces early on and as soon as we tried to lift ourselves up, we'd get knocked back down.

"Everybody had a good effort tonight … the goalies played well. It's just bounces and it's tough to recover from that."

Pechurski came on and stopped 12 of 13 shots to claim third-star honours. When it was determined that Fleury's backup Brent Johnson wasn't ready for game action despite being eligible to come off injured reserve Saturday, the 19-year-old Russian was signed to an amateur tryout contract.

The Penguins' fifth-round draft pick in 2008, Pechurski was coming off a 3-2 win for the Tri-City Americans of the Western Hockey League on Friday night.

He did enjoy a more memorable Saturday than Gonchar and Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby, who finished minus-4 and minus-3, respectively.

"We know they have a couple of good centres, not only him," said Kesler of Crosby, "so we had to worry about Malkin and [Jordan] Staal, too. That Staal line's been their best line the past couple of games."

Penguins 4th in East

Former Canucks agitator Matt Cooke also scored for the Penguins, who return home with a 30-19-1 record, good for fourth spot in the NHL's Eastern Conference.

Kesler's power-play goal rounded out the scoring for Vancouver, which improved to 28-18-2 and received a 22-save performance from Roberto Luongo.

Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin and Raymond collected two assists apiece.

The win moved the Canucks ahead of Calgary into sixth place in the West and into a three-way tie for first in the Northwest Division with the Flames and Colorado.

The idle Avalanche remain in top spot because they have played one less game than Vancouver. The Canucks gain the edge on Calgary, having 28 victories to the Flames' 26.

"It's tough not to [look at the standings]. It's such a close race [with the Canucks three points behind No. 4 Nashvillle in the West]," Kesler said. "It was definitely a big win for us."

Vancouver meets the winless-in-seven Oilers at Edmonton on Wednesday night before playing the first of four at home the following evening versus Dallas.