(
)
So when the handshake line forms tonight in Vancouver and the Bruins and Canucks are lavished with praise for their sportsmanship as they inevitably will be, because that’s the rule, we’re just supposed to forget the first six games and two weeks of this series?
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t recall a Stanley Cup Final in which the participants have displayed so little respect for one another on and off the ice, between and after the whistles. It truly appears as if players are intentionally trying to hurt one another.
It has been a street-brawl much of the time; biting, headhunting, slashing, gratuitous punches to the face after the fact. The Bruins have played the victim card. The Canucks have played the victim card. Players on both clubs have made snide comments. It all somehow seems to have sullied the showcase.
Maybe the luster can be retrieved tonight with a special Game 7 in which both Boston and Vancouver bring their “A” games, if they’re healthy enough, that is. The playoffs began two months and two days ago. The Bruins and Canucks each will be playing their 25th game of the tournament, that on top of the 82-game regular-season marathon.
Perhaps that’s explanation enough for why the quality of the hockey in this series has yet to rise to an elite level. After all the pounding the best players on both sides have given and taken through four rounds of competition in which the stakes, the tempo and the desperation mounts by the day, perhaps it is no wonder that it’s the grinders who have been left standing.
It’s difficult to take the Canucks seriously after the way they packed their bags at the first sign of adversity three times in three games in Boston.
Somehow, Roberto Luongo is one victory away from winning a Stanley Cup and an Olympic Gold Medal within a span of 16 months, even as his reputation as an elite goaltender founders. Nevertheless, despite three debacles in Boston, Luongo goes into tonight as the first goaltender in 56 years to record a pair of 1-0 victories in the Final.
How hilarious would it be if the Canucks win 1-0 tonight, yet Luongo fails to receive a single vote for the Conn Smythe Trophy?
It is essentially a given that Tim Thomas will capture the MVP, win or lose. He has been terrific, no doubt about that in recording a 2.06 goals against average and .937 save percentage in the playoffs, including a 1.34 GAA and .962 save pct. for the Final. It’s bizarre, however, that the Vancouver winners in Games 2 and 5, the first in OT and the other in the third period of a scoreless game, were both pretty soft goals.
It is a testament to the Canucks’ depth that the President’s Trophy winners are still standing in this series despite the lack of production from Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin and Ryan Kesler, their three most potent offensive weapons.
The only Canuck who would be considered for the Conn Smythe is Alexandre Burrows, and he probably would need a hat trick tonight to stand a chance.
You know what it is? There’s been too much garbage time and garbage for this series to be remembered particularly fondly in independent precincts. There hasn’t been a classic game yet.
There hasn’t been a single game, really, in which both teams were at or even near the tops of their respective games.
Maybe tonight the Canucks will get their game going. Maybe tonight will feature excellence rather than nonsense.
Maybe tonight, with everything on the line, with winner-take-all and winners doing the victory lap with the cherished chalice. Maybe tonight will rise to the moment.