It seems like only a year ago that we saw what occurred on Friday night at GM Place. As usual the original was better. This sequel was a waste of time. And money. While this nightmare hasn't ended yet, it's obvious and hauntingly sad ending seems all but a foregone conclusion.
Canucks coach Alain Vigneault has apparently learned nothing from last years loss to the Hawks. He still clearly has no answer for Byfuglien. Or any other Blackhawk for that matter. On paper I think these are two pretty even teams. last year I think the Canucks were definitely the better team. Joel Quenneville is outcoaching Vigneault. I think that's one of the biggest factors that nobody seems to be talking about.
There's no question that Luongo put the team in a hole when he allowed a weak goal 18 seconds into the game. Other than that I don't think he could really be faulted for anything else. When you give Chicago 8 power plays, they are going to score. I don't think there's any stopping them. Don't pick on the penalty killing. They need to stay out of the box in the first place.
Which leads conveniently to the reffing. I agree with the two crosschecking penalties O'Brien received. He needs to control himself better, and put the team first. But the Salo, Daniel Sedin (2), and Raymond penalties were garbage. Daniel got one penalty after his stick broke when he bumped a Chicago player after the whistle. This automatic penalty when you break a stick on a player mentality has to stop. Have you seen how many sticks break in a game? They are breaking all over the ice. Some break when a player receives a pass. It can't be that black and white. While the Mason Raymond incident was technically a penalty, if you are going to call that then they should be blowing the whistle every 20 or 30 seconds. In fact there should be no 5 on 5 play at all. The refs need to call a game so the players know what they can and cannot get away with. Clearly there is no consistency. The officiating in this league is atrocious right now. Did it cost the Canucks the game tonight? I'm glad you asked. Why yes it did in fact. The Blackhawks scored 4 power play goals and a 5th goal a few seconds after a penalty had ended. The league's influence last year resulted in Chicago beating us when they told the refs to allow Luongo to be treated like a pinata and the same thing is happening all over again. Feel free to call it a conspiracy if you wish. Those of you who think I'm being ridiculous are ignoring the facts. The penalties, the disallowed goals, bumping Luongo, pushing Luongo into the net and scoring. Enough's enough. This has got to change or the Canucks can't possibly win this series.
As it is they will have to win 3 in a row, 2 of them in Chicago. No easy task but keep in mind that's exactly what happened in '94 against the Flames. Since Calgary is a Canadian team the refs didn't influence the outcome of that and allowed us to come back and win what I think was one of the best series' in NHL history. It's happened before and it can happen again. It's possible. I just don't see this series even coming back to Vancouver. The way this series has fallen apart for the Canucks, and knowing the killer instinct that the Hawks have, is there any way the Canucks can win Sunday night? And this is coming from an optimist.
The Canucks need to get back to their game. Forget about Byfuglien and concentrate on what they have to do. They need to play on the edge, but don't go over it. Let Byfuglien stand in front of Luongo. You can't move him, so don't take up space in front trying. And don't cross check him in the neck after he's down. Yeah, I'm talking to you Alex. Our defense needs to be better. Starting with replacing Alberts with Rome. Alberts just can't keep up with the play. While we're at it, can we wave a magic wand and turn Kevin Bieksa into Nick Lidstrom? Maybe then we'd have a chance.
No question Luongo has to be better. I don't think it was fair of Vigneault to throw him under the bus though when he said in his post-game comments that Roberto is the second best goalie in this series. If it was that simple I'd actually be able to sleep tonight. Luongo can't see the puck. He can't come out and attack the shooter. He's being bumped and knocked down. 200 feet away, Antti Niemi has had it pretty easy. He's been able to see a huge majority of the shots. The Canucks finally started to be more aggressive tonight but still didn't really bother him enough. Even though he's seeing most of the shots, he still lets out a ton of rebounds that his defencemen gather up and clear out of harms way. At the other end of the ice the Canucks defencemen kick it around until it ends up on a Hawks stick and in it goes. I should also point out that Luongo did his job in the first two games. If the rest of the team had done theirs then they would have headed home up 2-0. I'm sure this series would look a lot different right now and it may have in fact been over by now. I'd like to think that nobody would argue that point. For those of you bitching about Luongo, (and I know there are A LOT of you) if you think he's so bad why do you think the Chicago game plan is always to bump him and not let him see the puck? Quenneville knows that if Luongo can come out and challenge shooters and see the puck that the Canucks will win the series. I can't dumb it down any more than that.
Alain Vigneault has coached some pretty solid teams in Vancouver and Montreal and yet his playoff record is now 2 games below .500. Do you think that those numbers are good enough? I'm the first one to say that most stats you can throw out the window. If stats told the whole story you wouldn't need to have scouts travel all over to watch games. Just look at the box score in the paper and then draft your players. The only stat that really counts are wins and losses. And this playoff stat of Vigneaults stinks. I'm not saying he's a terrible coach, but if you want to win a Stanely Cup I'm not convinced that he's your guy. I haven't completely given up on them yet, maybe there'll be some sort of Mother's Day Miracle, but if they get blown out on Sunday I really hope that Gillis will decide it's time for a change.
Speaking of Gillis, and don't think for a second that he's above any criticism, he failed miserably at the trade deadline. I think this team is actually very close to going all the way, they were just way too thin on defence. And that's with Salo miraculously remaining healthy throughout the playoffs thus far. Gillis probably knew that Mitchell wasn't coming back and he knew Lukowich was done for the year, yet all he could come up with was Alberts? Gillis has done some great things for the Canucks (mainly Samuelsson and Ehrhoff) but I want a GM that will do what is needed at the trade deadline to put us over the top when we are close.
I'm a little down right now but I know that I'll wake up in the morning and the sun will be up, the birds will be chirping. Life will go on as usual. Once I have my medication I will be fine. Tomorrow's a new day. They just need to take it one game at a time, one shift at a time. Our best players need to be our best players. It's do or die. Pick a cliche. Any cliche. It just makes me want to scream knowing that someplace, somewhere out there Gary Bettman is smiling.
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