 |
| 21 May Judgment Day |
Apart from giving God a bad name, it was utter, alarmist nonsense.
Everyone knows Game 7 between the Vancouver Canucks and Chicago Blackhawks is tonight. Anything after that is a bonus.
Yes, you could say our city is emotionally invested in the outcome. Lose and it seems the Earth could crack open and drop the Lower Mainland back into Georgia Strait. In that case, at least the Canucks will have beaten global warming in covering us with sea water. So, really, it's a win-win.
When general manager Mike Gillis took control of the Canucks three years ago, he railed against the idea the National Hockey League team was dangerously encumbered by its history of failure - that his players were somehow responsible and had to make amends for the inability of previous players to win a Stanley Cup in Vancouver.
But today, the full heft of this emotional burden weighs on the Canucks as they try for a fourth time to finish off the Blackhawks and avoid becoming the fourth NHL team ever to lose a playoff series after leading 3-0.
"The last 41 years?" captain Henrik Sedin said before the Canucks played themselves to the brink with Sunday's 4-3 overtime loss. "We've been here a long time, so we know what's going on."
"We" is he and brother Daniel -present and past NHL scoring champions, who are having a decent series but know they'll take much of the blame if the Canucks' collapse is completed. "It doesn't matter if it's Game 4 of the regular season or the last game of the playoffs, we're going to get the blame," Danny said. "We're fine with that; we always have been. But the mentality this year in this lockerroom is a lot different than the years before. We don't feel we have to go out and be heroes every night."
No, but it would be helpful if they were heroes in Game 7.
Or another Canuck. Any Canuck.
Who knew that Michael Frolik and Ben Smith - not Patrick Kane nor Jonathan Toews - would be the Blackhawk heroes in Game 6? Or that rookie Chicago goalie Corey Crawford would shut out the Canucks in Game 5, or that grinder Bryan Bickell would score spectacularly to launch the Hawks in Game 4?
Only Bickell was part of Chicago's Stanley Cup team last spring, and not a very big part. Yet, it's the strength of the Blackhawks' conviction in their ability to win and their experience doing so, as well as their playoff mastery over the Canucks, that has allowed them to roar back in this series.
Winning in the playoffs is a learned skill.
"You learn from your mistakes and you learn from the things you did well," Canuck associate coach Rick Bowness said. "You can talk all you want about lessons learned, but you can only learn so many lessons and then you've got to go win. You've got to have courage to do it and strength of character to do it and you can't be afraid of it. You've got to go do it."
