1. Roberto Luongo acquitted himself nicely in game five Friday night, backstopping Vancouver to a 3-2 series lead. It’s hard to imagine, considering the type of heat Lou has taken in the media for what was clearly the team’s poor performance mid-series against both Chicago and Boston, but he now leads the NHL with four post-season shutouts this year. He was the best penalty killer in a blue jersey, and dug deeply enough to rebound from giving up more goals in two games than any other keeper in Stanley Cup finals history. Now, wait. Before you get me the wrong way: I’m just going by pure stats here. Luongo was not the problem in games 3 and 4, he just has the nasty numbers beside his name in the loss column. In game 5, however, he was every bit the first star of this game for Vancouver. Some goalies, like Chris Osgood for example, get playoff shutouts by stopping 12 shots from the outside behind defensively impossible teams like Detroit. Luongo made 31 saves in game 5, many of them spectacular. He was solid through traffic, in tight, on deflections, with rebounds, early and late. He was everything the bandwagon jumpers said he couldn’t be: clutch.
2. Do we really need to see another mediocre effort from on-ice officials? We at Pucked in the Head are not homers who boo every penalty call – but frankly, Friday night’s officiating was not even close to Stanley Cup final quality. Especially in the first period when the zebras made three tickytack calls, all going one way on the ice, and without consistency or predictability. Later on, Burrows was fully cross-checked in the chest after a whistle – no call. Any other name on the back of that Canucks jersey, and Seidenberg would have been sitting for two minu… wait, no he wouldn’t. The refs have pretty much stopped calling the Bruins when they mug Vancouver’s top line. The NHL has a serious dearth of good referees if these chintzy whistles are going to make a difference in who takes home the Cup, but tackling a guy goes uncalled. It’s almost enough to make one long for the days of Mick McGeough. You heard me. McGeough.
3. After two atrocious team efforts in Boston, the Vancouver Canucks desperately needed someone to step up and be a difference maker. Alexander Edler was just that – a game-high ten hits, all perfectly timed, and some stellar penalty killing from the young Swede. This has got to make Mike Gillis happy, as he’s looking at a full four defensemen who are unrestricted free agents in just a few short weeks. Kevin Bieksa, Sami Salo, Christian Ehrhoff and Andrew Alberts are all playing top minutes in these here finals, and they’re all in for a hefty pay day – especially if they have rings on their fingers in a week’s time. There’s no way all of these guys are in Canucks jerseys by the end of the summer, so we’d better enjoy it right now, while they are.
4. If you watched any coverage of game five, you’ve heard this already. Who cares? It’s a great story, and it might just make Gillis breathe easier about the aforementioned parade of outgoing blueliners: 21-year-old Chris Tanev took the place of Alain Vigneault’s whipping boy Keith Ballard on the Canucks blueline, and had one hell of a game. His pass to Tanner Glass in the second period was a thing of beauty (see #7 below). Want to know how far he’s come to be here? Tanev played last year with the Rochester Institute of Technology Tigers and helped them reach the NCAA Division One Frozen Four. Two years ago, Tanev was one of the top D-men on the Markham Waxers. That’s right, the Waxers. That’s junior freakin’ A hockey, folks. This kid – just like elder statesman Sami Salo – is playing with balls of steel out there.
5. If Tim Thomas doesn’t win the Conn Smythe trophy, there’s been some larceny going on. And I don’t mean one-or-two-blown-calls-by-the-referees larceny – I mean high stakes, Mike-Murphy-running-to-Brian-Burke-for-help larceny. With his 24 saves in game five, he sits just 36 saves behind Kirk McLean for the most stops by a goaltender in a single Stanley Cup playoff year. The Canucks goalie made 760 saves in 1994, when Vancouver went to game seven of the finals against the New York Rangers – after game five, Thomas has 724 saves this playoff. He has been a force out there; an absolute beast, who deserves nothing short of the Conn Smythe trophy in his frickin’ living room for the next year.
6. I don’t want to get caught up in numbers here, but teams that win game 5 to take a 3-2 lead in the final series have won 27 of 34 Cups. That gives the 2010-11 Canucks a 79.4% probability of earning the city’s first Stanley Cup since 1915. They’ve only won eight times in Boston in the team’s 40-year history, but like I said, who cares about numbers? Besides, they’ve got two chances to salt this one away.
7.Should Vancouver take advantage of this opportunity, and win the first Cup in franchise history, Maxim Lapierre may never have to buy another drink in his life. And that’s just Tanner Glass saying thank you. As mentioned in #3 above, the fourth line forward whiffed on a glorious feed from Chris Tanev in the second period. A clever east-west pass – just as every analyst and assistant coach has been preaching in order to take advantage of Tim Thomas’s cheating out of his crease – and Glass had a wide open net to shoot at from three metres away. He panicked, choked, whatever you want to call it. He fanned on the shot, and on went the tight, 0-0 game at Rogers Arena. You could almost hear the Canucks not-so-faithful chalking Glass’s name up beside Nathan Lafayette’s – that poor guy hit a post late in game seven against the Rangers in 1994, and to this day isn’t remembered for anything else. Say his name to any Canucks fan over the age of 25, and the response will probably be “PING!” Tanner’s miscue loomed large until Lapierre broke the tie in the first half of the third period. You can bet Glass is making room on his credit card for Lapierre’s bar tab as you read this.