Finally.
A fan remarked today that the layoff between games for the Vancouver Canucks was far, far too long. "Heck, the last time the Vancouver Canucks played a hockey game, Winnipeg didn't even have an NHL team!"
Well, they do now. (congratulations to Winnipeg!) And now, finally, we are sitting on the precipice of the beginning of the Stanley Cup Final. This series has already been dissected to death by people far better at analyzing hockey than myself. The Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks have more than likely scoured hours of video tape on each other, searching for weaknesses that they can exploit in an effort to bring home hockey's Holy Grail.
Everything that can be said about these two teams has been said. Every storyline about the series, every similarity, every difference, every Boston player who has a B.C. connection and every Canuck player who has a Boston connection has been analyzed. Heck, they even traced members of the Boston Bruins team now--today--back to the worst trade in Vancouver Canucks history. You know. The one that saw us ship out B.C. Boy Cam "Seabass" Neely to the Boston Bruins for a big fat pile of nothing. The same Cam Neely that went on to become an NHL Hall of Famer.
Yes. It seems every storyline has been told.
So I'm going to step back and try and be original for a second. I am fully aware that the tale I am about to tell could likely be told by a counterpart of mine in Boston. I am sure that the Bruins' roster is filled with stories of brotherhood, redemption and spirit. But damnit, this is a blog about the Vancouver Canucks. So I'm going to put a hold on delivering lip service to the Boston Bruins for just one night.
I feel the Vancouver Canucks can and will win this series. That is a claim almost any Canuck fan can make. But I am not going to sit here and analyze special teams, goaltending styles, depth of scoring, physicality, impartial vs. partial officiating or what have you. As I said before, that has all been done by writers far better versed than myself.
The reason why I feel the Canucks are going to win this series and win their first Stanley Cup is because, well, they just have to. This is the final chapter in so many stories of redemption, I find myself almost incredulous looking at them all side-by-side. Take a good look at the faces of many of the players wearing Vancouver Canucks colours. Each of their faces, each of their names tells a different story. Each of these men has suffered incredible amounts of blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point. And oh so many of them have something to prove.
Let's start with the new guys. The two cast offs that were acquired at the trade deadline. Two ex-Montreal Canadiens by the names of Christopher Higgins and Maxim Lapierre. It wasn't too long ago, for either of these two, that they were both considered vital players on the most storied franchise in the history of the NHL. Chris Higgins was a high first-round draft pick in 2002. He posted three 20+ goal seasons between 2005 and 2008. He was then dealt away by the Habs at the age of 26 years old. What went wrong?
The popular consensus is that Higgins enjoyed the Montreal night life a bit too much. As a young hockey player whose star was on the rise in one of the biggest hockey hotbeds in the country, he enjoyed a bit too much off-ice extra-cirricular activity. What began as a trade from Montreal to the Big Apple of New York City turned into a two-year exodus that saw him play for five teams in the course of two calendar years. But the Vancouver Canucks saw enough in him that they liked; they rolled the dice and acquired him for a 3rd round draft pick and a defensive prospect (Evan Oberg) who may or may not make an impact on the NHL.
Maxim Lapierre is a similar story. Also an ex-Hab, Lapierre was a vital component of the team that made a surprising run to the Eastern Conference Final last year on the back of sublime goaltending by Jaroslav Halak. The man affectionately referred to by Habs fans as "Yappy Lappy", so dubbed for his propensity for driving opponents bat**** crazy, was considered a keeper. But part way through the 2010-2011 season, he was cast off to Anaheim. The buzz began--he was uncoachable, undisciplined. He bounced from team to team much as Higgins did--he has played for three teams in the 2010-2011 season alone.
But now both of these players are playing in the Stanley Cup Final. And they have both made signifcant contributions along the way. Higgins leads the team in one of the most important departments in which a player can lead a team--game winning goals. He has accounted for three of them. He has also surprised Canuck players, staff and fans alike with a stunning gritty game and teriffic work along the boards. Lapierre, meanwhile, has stepped admirably into the empty skates left by the injured Manny Malhotra. He is far and away the most physical of the Canucks, leading the team in hits thus far on this Stanley Cup run. He has also played a big role on the penalty kill, and is second on the team in faceoff percentage behind only noted defensive demon Ryan Kesler.
From where they came from, to where they are now. Two cast-offs that nobody else wanted, to two vital players on a team endeavouring to win its first Stanley Cup. Do you think these two might, just might, be motivated?
How about Kevin Bieksa? Oh yeah, he's the guy that scored the goal to get us to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since Bill Clinton was President of the United States! Yeah! Everybody loves the man they call "Juice". He's an internet sensation with his "Shot Shot Shot" reference. He's charismatic, he's a leader on the team, and man has he ever scored some big goals for this team. He was great against the Sharks!
We might say that now. But it wasn't always the case.
Flash back to only just last season. For the second time in his career, Bieksa suffered a freak injury--the same injury that caused him to miss significant time in the 2007/2008 season: a laceration to his leg. He returned in time for the playoffs, but he was still somewhat out of sync. Fans lamented what they called a "Jekyll and Hyde" playoff performance last year, perhaps puncuated no better than it was during Games 5 and 6 vs. Chicago in the second round. In Game 5, Bieksa was a force. He scored 2 goals and added an assist in a 4-1 win to extend the life of the Vancouver Canucks. Just two nights later, he committed costly turnover after costly turnover and the Canucks were ventilated 5-1 by the eventual Stanley Cup Champions on home ice.
Canuck Nation, naturally, was screaming for his head. Fans across the internet were lining up with offers to drive him to the airport. Indeed, when the Canucks acquired Keith Ballard and Dan Hamhuis, it looked like Bieksa's number was up. The media was asking him every day about the possibility of being traded, and Bieksa acknowledged it was all out of his hands. And it was.
And had it not been for another freak injury to fellow Canuck defender Sami Salo, the lasting impression we as Canuck fans might have had of Kevin Bieksa's tenure as a Canuck may well have been that final game against Chicago. A game punctuated by errors. But Bieksa got a reprieve. And here we are, only 1 year later, and he's the man of the hour. He has been the consensus top defender for the Canucks thus far in these playoffs, playing a fantastic blend of physical, in your face hockey. And now he puncutates that with goals rather than errors.
Do you think the defender who many were ready to run out of town only one short year ago might, just might have something to prove?
How about Roberto Luongo? When he played for a nothing team in the middle of the sunbelt, fans across the league agreed he was one of the best goaltenders on the planet. On any given night, he was usually the only reason that the hapless Florida Panthers weren't getting blown out of their rink. Once he was traded to Vancouver, the criticism began. "Reboundo" was a favorite nickname at the time. But Luongo answered his critics with a season to remember in 2006-2007. He was a finalist for both the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender, and the Hart Trophy as the league's MVP. He had a stunning playoff run after making the post-season for the first time in his career. People jokingly referred to the Vancouver Canucks as "the Roberto Luongo". He was, for all intents and purposes, the face of the team. And the most important player.
But perhaps that season built up a bit too much mystique. Flash forward one year, and a difficult pregnancy for his wife lead to a struggle down the stretch for the Canucks--the Northwest Division Champs the previous year--to make the playoffs. They ultimately fell short, and much of the blame fell unfairly at the feet of Luongo.
The next season, he was named Captain of the Vancouver Canucks. A very rare move to make a goaltender Captain, and it was largely a ceremonial duty, but one that he and the team seemed to embrace. He was a man on a mission. In spite of missing time due to injury, he was duly back in form. The Canucks made the playoffs again and swept the St. Louis Blues largely on the strength of Luongo stymying everything that they had to throw at him. He was back in form. But then, the Canucks would run into a nemesis that would haunt them for three years: the Chicago Blackhawks. The 2008/2009 playoff season saw the birth of what many anti-Canucks refer to as "7uongo". Game 6 between the favoured Canucks and the upstart Chicago Blackhawks. A series which the Canucks had lead 2-1 was now lead 3-2 by a young team that had never tasted the playoffs. The Canucks came out hard and poured 5 goals into the Chicago net. 5 goals in front of one of the best goaltenders in the game. It seemed enough to win.
But it wasn't. Luongo allowed 7, and the Canucks were eliminated from the playoffs to the tune of Chelsea Dagger.
The whispers about Luongo began that off-season, and he set out in 2009-2010 to silence them. He started off in teriffic fashion--he was excellent leading up to the Olympic break, and then he got to complete a storybook ending for Team Canada as he came into the net in relief of one of the greatest goaltenders of all-time in Martin Brodeur and helped Team Canada win the Gold Medal for Olympic Hockey on home ice. On Vancouver ice.
But even then, the whispers continued. "The team won in spite of Luongo" was the tune the naysayers were singing. Luongo did little to dispell that down the stretch--he posted his worst statistical season a Canuck. But then the playoffs began and he seemed to have new life; a strong opening round against the Los Angeles Kings, a series the Canucks won in six games, seemed to have him on a role. That is, until the Canucks ran into the Chicago Blackhawks once again in Round 2. One year to the day later, the Blackhawks again eliminated the Canucks in six games. And once again, another round of off-season questions began. Luongo relenquished the captaincy of the team to focus solely on goaltending.
And focus he did. 2010-2011 saw him post the best numbers of his career and he earned his third nomination for the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender. He also won the William M. Jennings Trophy with backup Cory Schneider for allowing the fewest goals against of any team in the league. But when the playoffs began, a familiar nemesis was staring back at him--the Chicago Blackhawks were the Canucks' 1st round opponent. The adversity Luongo had faced in his career combined to this point paled in comparison to what he went through in the first round. Everything went smoothly for the first three games; the Canucks went up 3-0 and a sweep seemed to be in store. The Canucks seemed primed to conquer their playoff demon.
But the Hawks came clawing back. They outscored the Canucks by a whopping 12-2 margin in Games 4 and 5. Luongo took the brunt of the criticism, but the stunning move came in Game 6 when head coach Alain Vigneault opted to start rookie backup Cory Schneider. Luongo was relegated to the dressing room to watch the proceedings from a TV screen. The Vezina goaltender, the Franchise player, the Olympic Gold Medal winner, was not called upon to start the game. Cory Schneider later injured himself and Luongo ended up going in cold; the Canucks lost Game 6 in overtime, and Vigneault turned back to Luongo for Game 7.
This is where Luongo re-wrote the ending to the story. He was a man who had been criticised as being mentally soft. He allowed bad goals and bad games to get to him. He allowed opposing teams into his head. Well, not this time. Luongo shut down the Hawks; only a superhuman effort by Jonathan Toews late in the game beat him. And in overtime of that seventh game, Luongo made a season-saving stop on Patrick Sharp to extend the life of the Canucks just long enough for Alexandre Burrows to score the magic goal to finally, finally, vanquish the Blackhawks.
Luongo still faced criticism in the second round for not being as good as Pekka Rinne, the goaltender at the other end of the ice. This in spite of the fact that through 6 games, Luongo only allowed 11 goals into the net. Luongo did save his best for the series against the Sharks, as the Canucks were outshot handily in the final two games of that series, particularly in the clinching Game 5. Luongo made 54 saves in the 3-2 victory that propelled the Canucks into the Stanley Cup Finals.
Do you think the goaltender who everyone outside of Canuck Nation--and even some within it--criticised as being mentally soft, as not being a big-game goaltender, as being a guy that teams won in spite of rather than because of, might--just might--have something to prove?
Last, but not least--how about Daniel and Henrik Sedin?
Drafted 2nd and 3rd overall in 1999, the Sedin Twins put up with an inhuman amount of flak over the early parts of their careers. The criticisms were quick from the start and they continued on for seasons to come. The nickname "The Sisters" was coined early, a reference to how the Sedins were supposedly soft. They were easily pushed over, they were slow, and in spite of their sixth sense for where the other was and the added ability to make the play to one another, they lacked offensive punch.
Drafted as the saviours of a franchise coming out of one of the bleakest periods in the team's history, they didn't exactly light up the NHL the way players like Alexander Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Steve Stamkos or John Tavares have since they have been drafted. No; the Sedins' progress was slow. The benefit of hindsight allows us to also add that it was steady.
But for those going through it at the time, it was just plain slow. The Twins were not putting up eye-popping numbers in either the regular season or the playoffs. The fact that they developed something of a penchant for scoring timely goals, especially in the playoffs, was lost in the shuffle.
The lockout came and went, and the Twins suddenly--quite suddenly--came into their own. They started scoring, at a point-a-game pace no less. In the span of a few short years, they went from players that people were writing off as just another couple of busts from a dreadful 1999 draft year to players who were contending for some of the finest hardware the NHL has to offer. Henrik Sedin capped this off with a dream season in 2009-2010, where he won the Art Ross Trophy as the league's top scorer with 112 points--a franchise record that eclipsed the mark of 110 set by the great Pavel Bure--and the Hart Trophy as the league's MVP. Both were first-time wins for a Vancouver Canuck. Henrik Sedin was also named the Captain of the team to start the 2010-2011 season, a season which saw his brother Daniel follow quickly in Henrik's footsteps. Daniel won the Art Ross Trophy this year and is a finalist for the Hart as the league's MVP. Not bad for a couple of busts.
But even more recently, these two were criticised for their playoff performance this year. They were both virtual no-shows against Nashville (for the most part--back to that in a moment). It was rather obvious that Henrik was labouring through some kind of injury that hampered his whole line's effectiveness, but that didn't stop the boo birds from hopping onto their soap boxes and questioning not only his playing ability, but his leadership as the team's Captain.
Lost in the shuffle of Vancouver's Game 6 win over Nashville was the fact that the Twins combined to score the game winning goal; Henrik Sedin put the puck to Kesler who shot it at the net. The rebound came to Daniel who scored the series-clinching goal. In the furor of Ryan Kesler's stunning 2nd round performance, this was lost.
Henrik was able to rest between the second and third rounds, and he attacked the San Jose Sharks in the Conference Final with a vengeance. Ryan Kesler scored 11 points in 6 games against Nashville. Henrik trumped that with 12 points in 5 games against San Jose as he single-handedly devoured the Sharks. He scored the game-winning goal in the first game. He set up the game-winning goal in Game 4, and he set up the dramatic tying goal in Game 5. Daniel was no slouch either, recording 6 points in the 5 games against the Sharks.
Do you think that these two players who endured ridicule from the press, the league, and their own fans might--just might--have something to prove?
This all brings me back to the title of this blog entry. None of these players have found what they are looking for. Hockey's Holy Grail is the Stanley Cup, and only Mikael Samuelsson and Aaron Rome have played for teams that have won Cups. But for all of the above mentioned players--and there are more on the roster than that, but I feel like I've already written more than most can read in one sitting--they just have to win. Their trials and tribulations have lead them to this moment.
A recent advertisement says "this moment is where everything you want will collide with everything standing in your way".
The Boston Bruins are standing in their way. My hunch is that for these players, the Bruins are child's play in comparison to the personal demons they have overcome to reach this moment.
It's time to bring this thing home
It's time to bring the Stanley Cup to Vancouver.
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