It's a Long Way to the Top

"Smile you son of a..." something or other.

Those were the classic words of Roy Scheider in the 1975 blockbuster "Jaws", a film which pitted man against beast as three men on one small boat hunted and eventually destroyed a vicious man-eating predator.

Maybe the plot differs slightly from the Western Conference Final clash coming our way, but the sentimets express by Scheider could easily be expressed by Canuck nation.

Yes, it will be an all-West Coast matchup as the Vancouver Canucks will do battle with the San Jose Sharks for the first time ever in the post-season. This series promises to be a pitched battle between two teams that have an awful lot to prove. They have (perhaps unfairly, but nonetheless) been villified in recent years for not living up to the success of their regular seasons when the going got tough in the post-season. This is definitely more reflective of the Sharks than it is of the Canucks, but the similarities between the two teams are striking.

Both teams have players who have racked up the regular season achievements. Noteably, both Henrik Sedin and Joe Thornton have collected Art Ross and Hart Trophies. Both teams have won President's Trophies, and both teams have some good young talent filling out the supporting cast.

Both teams have played 13 games thus far in the playoffs. Both teams held a 3-0 series lead over a fierce rival, only to watch that lead dissipate and force a deciding seventh game. Both teams then won that 7th game to move on.

Both teams played a 6-game series against an opponent that many pundits deemed to be inferior, at least on paper. Both both teams were pushed hard by their respective opponents. Both teams will be making their third ever appearance in the Western Conference Final.

But that is where one key difference lies; the Canucks are 2-0 in Conference Final appearances, whereas the Sharks are 0-2.

The last time the Canucks made the Conference Final in 1994, they played against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs were in the Conference Final for the second straight year (and had just come off of a semi-final victory over the San Jose Sharks). They were dispatched quickly, in five games, by the Canucks.

So now the Canucks are once again in the Conference Final against a team that has gotten this far for the second year in a row. The Sharks were swept in four games by the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks last season. One of the biggest reasons for this, they felt, was their inability to put pucks past then-Hawks netminder Antti Niemi.

So what did they do about it? Well, they went out and signed him.

Antti Niemi is an interesting goaltender. When the top goaltenders in the league are discussed, Niemi's name never comes up. He is not an Olympian or a Vezina Trophy candidate, and he was not regarded as Calder Trophy material last season. The Canucks have played against goaltenders who are all of the above.

What Niemi does have, however, is an undefeated record in playoff rounds. He is currently 6-0 dating back to last year. The Canucks will get a second crack at trying to be the first team to hand him a series loss. They averaged three goals a game against him last season in the second round, and Niemi was certainly not a big reason why the Blackhawks advanced over the Canucks.

But he has an interesting ability to look incapable of stopping a beachball one night, while coming out the next and looking like he could stop a freight train with one finger.

The question will ultimately be, can the Canucks exploit him? Again, they didn't have troubles scoring on him last year. The Los Angeles Kings and Detroit Red Wings both were able to put many pucks past him this year, but the Sharks have kept winning.

Part of that can be attributed to their offensive attack. While their big three of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Dany Heatley have long held the label of playoff underachievers (Thornton is doing some work to dispel that label this year, but we'll get to that in a moment) it is the supporting cast of the Sharks that provides that playoff moxie that is so critical to advance. I am speaking of Ryan Clowe, Logan Couture, Devin Setoguchi and Joe Pavelski. All of these players are capable of not just scoring goals, but big goals.

Add to that that Joe Thornton finally seems to be coming up big in the big games, and that makes the Sharks' attack formidable.

So how do the Canucks measure up?

The Canucks have some question marks of their own. Much has been made of the outstanding playoff performance of Ryan Kesler to date. He virtually single-handedly sent the Nashville Predators packing in Round 2, but the Sharks will present a muich different challenge. Kesler will likely face the task of trying to slow down Joe Thornton, much like his task in Round 1 was to handle Jonathan Toews. We know how much offense Kesler produced in Round 1, so can he still put up numbers while trying to contain the man they call Jumbo Joe?

If he cannot, production from other sources becomes critical. The Sedin Twins simply must be better than they have been to date. Rumor is that Henrik is nursing some sort of lower body injury, so maybe the long break between Rounds 2 and 3 will do him some good. Daniel and Henrik need to put their elite caps on (or at the very least, get Kesler to share some of his wheaties with them) so they can big important factors in the third round.

The Canucks should not be short on motivation. As I said back in Round 1, it seems to be them against the world right now. Some fans are even calling the San Jose Sharks "Canada's Team", as they want nothing more than to see the Canucks fail. Various columnists from around Canada are villifying Vancouver--and British Columbia--as the "least Canadian of all the major cities in Canada".

All of this is complete idiocy, of course. So let those talking heads make themselves look ignorant by attacking the multi-culturalism of Vancouver and BC. Let them root for whatever team they want. Canuck Nation has tuned them out to this point, and they'll keep marching to their own drum now.

The Canucks just need to do the same thing. They are four wins away from a berth in the biggest dance of their lives.

But as usual, the playoff credo remains the same - the most important game is the next one.

And that is played on Sunday. The blood is in the water, the question is who will arrive first - the Shark or the Orca?