Canucks vs Blackhawks v.2.0

Chicago beats Nashville in game 6 so now whatever happens between Detroit and Phoenix doesn’t matter. The Canucks will be facing the Blackhawks in round 2 for the second year in a row. Bring on the redemption. This time the result will be different! I hope/pray. We all remember how the Blackhawks dismantled our defense and thus Luongo in game 6 last year. The taste is still rather bitter I must say. Our offense is better this year, just ask Art Ross. Luongo has his swagger back after making some A+ game-changing type saves against the Kings. And hey, you gotta give us the edge in goal-tending, I don’t know anybody outside of Finland who would take Niemi over Luongo. Let’s assume our penalty killing will have normalized itself after that horrible couple of games it had against the Kings. That leaves our defense which although it has played fairly well recently is still a little suspect and is one freak-Sami-Salo-injury away from being decimated. But you also have to wonder about Chicago’s defence, Brent Sopel is a major player for them, after all. I think we also have more gumption as a team than we had last year. I was expecting us to fold in game 4 against the Kings when they got those ridiculous power play goals and had the lead going in to the third period, but Luongo made a huge save and the rest of the guys got their acts together and took it to the Kings big time. The series was essentially over after that.

The first thing we need is for Edler and/or Bieksa to land a big hit on Kane and/or Toews and then we need Demitra and/or Samuelsson to blow a shot by Niemi and we will be on our way to winning the series in 6 games. Let’s just hope the refs don’t screw us. Or that our usual Canuckness takes over and we find a way to lose. Luongo is no Cloutier, that’s just not going to happen, it just smells different this year.