Stairway to Heaven

And then there was one.

June 15, 2011 will mark the final game of the 2010/2011 NHL season, one way or another. Whether it's the Vancouver Canucks or the Boston Bruins that ultimately hoist the Stanley Cup over their heads, this season ends tonight. It has been a long and winding road for the Vancouver Canucks, but they have found themselves as close to the Stanley Cup as this franchise has ever come.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs began on April 14. Two months plus one day later, and the Vancouver Canucks have been through an awful lot. In the first round, they drew their arch-nemesis Chicago Blackhawks. After walking through the first half of the series to stake a 3-0 lead, the Canucks looked to be ready to punch an easy ticket to the 2nd round. But then the Blackhawks mounted a counter-attack, forcing a decisive Game 7 at Rogers Arena. All eyes were on Canuck goaltender Roberto Luongo to see how he would fare under the pressure. He delivered and so did his teammates, as Alexandre Burrows' overtime slapshot over the shoulder of Chicago goaltender Corey Crawford ended the Blackhawks' three-year reign of torment and propelled the Canucks into the second round.

Things didn't get much easier from there. The scrappy Nashville Predators and the towering figure of goaltender Pekka Rinne awaited the Canucks. This time, the eyes of the hockey world were on Ryan Kesler who single-handedly dominated the Predators in one of the most amazing one-series performances the Canucks franchise has ever seen. 11 points in 6 games, plus being in on 11 of the Canucks' 14 goals in that series were all eye-popping figures.

The San Jose Sharks waited for the Canucks next, and the Sedin Show began. Not to be outdone by his American counterpart, Henrik Sedin racked up a whopping 12 points in just 5 games against the San Jose Sharks, as he and brother Daniel Sedin ran roughshod over the Stanley Cup hopefuls from California. Kevin Bieksa also came to the fore with some clutch offense, ultimately scoring the goal that sent this team to the Final for the first time in 17 years.

And now, it's the Boston Bruins. It has been a strange series, with the home team taking every game thus far. The games at Rogers Arena have been nailbiters, all being decided by 1-goal and two of the three being shutouts for Roberto Luongo. Just the opposite has held true when the series shifted to Boston, where the Bruins outscored the Canucks by a combined 17-3 and Roberto Luongo was relegated to the bench twice.

It has been a long two months. The Canucks have lost soldiers along the way. Mikael Samuelsson went down in the second round to a season-ending sports hernia injury that required surgery. Steady Dan Hamhuis has been MIA since Game 1 of the Final with a mysterious injury. And then the worst of them all, Mason Raymond suffering a broken back in Boston in Game 6.

They have lost more over the years. Many a Canuck gets lost in thought when the name "Luc Bourdon" is mentioned. The affable and friendly Canucks' defender who was killed in a motorcycle crash back in 2008. He is never far from the minds of his teammates, especially now with the ultimate goal for any hockey player within reach.

They have faced tremendous adversity. In Games 4 and 5 against Chicago, they were outscored 12-2. Roberto Luongo didn't even start Game 6, with Alain Vigneault opting to start Cory Schneider. But Luongo came back in Game 7, making 31 saves while only allowing 1 goal. They faced adversity in this series against the Bruins, where after being outscored 12-1 in Games 3 and 4 in Boston, Roberto Luongo bounced back with a 31-save shutout while Maxim Lapierre provided the game's only goal.

For two months, this team has persevered through loss, controversy, pressure and more, all in the search of a dream. It's the dream of every player who ever plays the game: to lift the Stanley Cup over your head.

Tonight doesn't just represent the end of the 2010/2011 season, it represents the last time that this group of players will hit the ice as a team. It's a sad fact of the NHL that every team has changing faces from year to year. On this year's team alone, unrestricted free agents include Raffi Torres, Christopher Higgins, Sami Salo, Kevin Bieksa, Christian Ehrhoff, Andrew Alberts, and Tanner Glass.

Not all of these players will be brought back. Not all of them may even play next year; Sami Salo is 36-years-old and has an impressive compilation of injuries. After the long grind to reach this moment, this may just be the final stop on the journey of his career.

The Canucks need to take a good, long look around their dressing room. The chance doesn't come very often. The chance to win the Stanley Cup is a rare gift indeed. 17 years ago, when the Canucks last made the Final, they had two franchise cornerstones: Trevor Linden and Pavel Bure. Linden was 25 years old, and Bure was 24 years old. Both young by any standard. When they came away from Game 7 against the New York Rangers, some conventional wisdom suggested that they had their whole careers ahead of them to get another chance.

But they never did. Bure retired 9 years later, Linden 14 years later. Neither of them came close to winning that coveted Cup ever again.

The chance doesn't come very often. For many of these players, it may in fact never come again. That's a sobering reality that they need to think long and hard about.

The bottom line is that these men, these hockey players, these Vancouver Canucks, cannot leave anything in the dressing room. They must lay everything they've got on the ice, they must fight with every stride of their skates and they must push with every ounce of their intensity. We've seen their will bend, but never break in this Stanley Cup playoff, and they can ill afford to start that now.

To a man, the Vancouver Canucks need to play the game of their lives tonight. Trends, statistics, history, patterns, superstitions, doubt, controversy--none of that matters now. All that matters when the puck drops tonight is the Game. 60 minutes of the hardest hockey anyone will ever play is what seperates the Vancovuer Canucks from the biggest prize in the game.

Win or lose, they should be incredibly proud of what they have accomplished to this point. I know I am.

But they call the Stanley Cup the most difficult trophy to win in all of professional sports for a reason. To quote Bruce Cockburn, "nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight". The Canucks need to seize the opportunity in front of them and step up, stand up, and play like Champions.

Tonight, they need to become Champions in every sense of the word.

They need to do it in Vancouver, on June 15, 2011. They need to make history.

Go Canucks Go.