The Peak

NHL : Canucks' playoff chances bleak

By Matt Lee

Nobody said winning was going to be easy.

In the wild Western Conference, parity is the norm and at any time a team that finished in the playoffs one year can easily be on the outside looking in the next. For the Vancouver Canucks, that nightmare is increasingly closer to becoming a reality.

With three games left in their season against rival Northwest foes, Canuck fans are about to find out for certain if Alain Vigneault’s squad are contenders or pretenders.

Many questions that were asked at the beginning of this season still have not been answered. Where are the goals going to come from? For a while it seemed Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows could help share the load, but they have since dried up on the scoresheet.

Does Markus Naslund still have anything left to give? In November and December he looked like he had returned to his dominant form with six goals in four games, but has also reverted back to his goalless ways.

Is this the last hurrah for Trevor Linden? Being a healthy scratch for half a season and brought back for the final run, he has left many scratching their heads. In a season which has seen more questions than a philosophy textbook, nothing seems to have been clearly answered.

How can anyone sum up the Canucks’ season in one word? Disappointing? Lacklustre? All good choices, but look back at this season and it seems the word ‘inconsistent’ fits the bill.

Throughout the year, Vancouver has seen itself play as the Northwest division leader and as a 10th-place team a month later. When they played with their best lineup they failed to win games when it mattered the most, but when they lost key players to injury they suddenly bucked up and won again. The team’s season has been a typical roller coaster ride. How did their season come to this? It’s hard to come up with a definite answer. If the Canucks fail to make the playoffs, there will be a lot of ‘what ifs’ being thrown around this town. What if the Canucks won a few more shootouts? What if the Canucks had been healthier? What if they had acquired a legitimate scorer at the deadline? The scenarios are endless.

Could the Canucks have done things differently? Perhaps. But can anyone really blame Dave Nonis for not making surplus changes? His team roared into the playoffs last season having lost only eight games in the last half of the season and it looked like the Canucks had discovered their identity and had built a solid core around franchise goaltender Roberto Luongo.

That isn’t to say Nonis didn’t search for a scoring winger or centre; the cost just seemed too extravagant. Whether the Canucks make the playoffs or not, it seems evident that there will be some big changes this off-season.

At the beginning of the year, the Canucks were expected to be able to defend their Northwest division title and put up similar numbers like they did in the last half of the 2007 season.

But with the Canuck defense alone having lost 138 man games to injury and counting, the team has been unable to string together consistent win streaks for a long period of time. It has now boiled down to the point that it really does not seem to matter to Canuck fans anymore who they play in the playoffs, as long as they make the playoffs. And in a city which craves hockey and demands success at the same time, fans are willing to take anything they can get with a team which has been ravaged by injury and labeled with inconsistency.

Nashville, on the other hand, looks like they have less to lose. The Predators were a team not expected to contend for a playoff spot after they lost a lot of talent in the off-season.

With ownership and the concept of hockey in Tennessee in question, Nashville GM Dave Poile was forced to unload Scott Hartnell, Kimmo Timonen, and Tomas Vokoun while also being unable to keep Paul Kariya and Peter Forsberg on the team. A lot of experts had the Predators pegged for an out-of-playoffs finish, but captain Jason Arnott has been able to right the ship and allow the team to make it a thrilling finish to the season.

The Canucks are still capable of making the playoffs. Despite the fact they have a tougher schedule than their Nashville competitor (Colorado, Edmonton, and Calgary), Vancouver has the luxury of playing the last three contests on home ice, whereas the Predators must play two of their last three contests on the road. Whether playing on home ice at GM Place is enough to propel the Canucks into the playoffs remains to be seen.

What do the Vancouver Canucks need to do to force themselves into the playoffs? It is as this Peak reporter said when they lost Kevin Bieksa and Sami Salo — it’s time the team get back to doing what it knows it can do, and that’s playing defense-first hockey.

The pressure of trying to score goals has been a burden for the Canuck forwards that they’re trying to score goals and play defense all at once, something they’re not cut out for during a long stretch of games.

If the Canucks can rediscover their identity of playing air-tight defence and taking only smart penalties, making the playoffs will be a piece of cake. But when you’re seeing all five Canuck skaters huddled around Roberto Luongo’s crease trying to give him the puck, something is wrong. Right now, the Canucks aren’t playing playoff-style hockey; they’re simply trying to keep their heads above the water and gasping for breath at the same time.

This team has three games to silence their critics. If the Canucks play well and manage to enter the playoffs on a high note, it could possibly signal the beginning of something great.

If they fail to live up to the expectations set by the media and fans, however, it could mean a bitter departure from Vancouver to a handful of Canuck favourites.