Who Are You

On the eve of puckdrop for the Western Conference Final, most have now had time to digest the fact that the Vancouver Canucks and the San Jose Sharks will go tete a tete with the winner moving on to the big dance for Lord Stanley's Mug. Everyone has had their say, everyone has written their piece. It is now essentially a waiting game for 5:00PM tomorrow when the puck will finally drop and it will all come down to the players to determine who shall go on, and who shall go home.

To say this series is something of a dead heat would be an understatement. As has been noted many times (by myself included) these teams could almost be mirror images of each other, both in terms of their rosters and the accomplishments of the players on them, as well as the disappointments they have experienced to get to this point.

Ex-Canuck Kyle Wellwood touched on that earlier this season, when he questioned the mentality of the Vancouver Canucks. He questioned the Canucks' maturity and felt that they played as if they were "afraid to lose".

You may remember in Round 1 against Chicago that Canuck defensemen Kevin Bieksa got into a war of words with Chicago tree trunk John Scott. Bieksa wasn't backing down on Saturday when he implied that the Canucks were only afraid to lose when Wellwood was on their team, given he was "the smallest 3rd line center in the league".

(The comment was in jest. A contrast to the back-and-forth with John Scott, and more akin to the friendly barbs that flew between Bieksa and Shane O'Brien in Round 2. That hasn't stopped some of the media from painting it as a "shot across the bow", however).

The reality is that both of these teams will be under immense pressure, and the margin for error is nearly invisible. In San Jose, they have built a team that is a perennial regular season power house. Joe Thornton has an Art Ross Trophy, a Hart Trophy and an Olympic Gold Medal in his trophy case at home. Dany Heatley as a Gold Medal and also has two 50-goal seasons on his NHL resume. Patrick Marleau has an Olympic Gold Medal as well. But what all of these stars are missing is a Stanley Cup. Comb through the lineup, and Dan Boyle is the only star member of the team to hold a Stanley Cup ring, and he received that in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The Sharks have bowed out early in the playoffs many times before, but it would seem something is finally changing for them. This is the second year in a row (and third time in seven years) the Sharks have made it to the Western Conference Final. It is no small feat to make it to the NHL's final four. To wit, the Canucks are in the Western Conference Final for their third time, too. Except it's taken 40 years to get to that number.

The Canucks--make no mistake about it--are gunning for a Stanley Cup. Under new ownership and new management, the Canucks have aggressively overhauled their roster to get to this point. Long standing veterans retired or moved on, and younger players were able to step up. This is a markedly different team from all of those assembled before it. Never before have the Canucks had so much depth at every position. Even the loss of Manny Malhotra hasn't managed to halt them to this point, and he is a massively underrated part of this team--quite a statement when you consider the praise he gets from around the league for his contributions. All the lip service he receives still does not entirely sum up just how huge of a hole he left.

But with that depth comes expectation. And the expectation is victory, something Vancouver and San Jose both have in common.

The Canucks have their own list of players who have a long list of regular season and international accolades--Henrik and Daniel Sedin, Roberto Luongo, and Ryan Kesler chief among them. But once again, these players will ultimately be judged on one thing: their ability to get to and win a Stanley Cup Final.

To this point in the playoffs, both of these teams have gone through their bumps in the road. They received identical comeback-scares from the Blackhawks and the Red Wings. They have each battled through a six-game series against an opponent who--at least on paper--seems inferior.

And now it comes down to the two of them. One will move on and, perhaps, shake the label of playoff disappointment. The other will--fairly or not--be back to the drawing board.

The first step in determining just which will do which is tomorrow night.