THE SPURT, AND THE HURT, OF IT ALL
In their 12th season, the Canucks made an improbable run to the Stanley Cup final,
“It hurts because it’s so hard to get there.”
Thirty-seven years after the upstart and odds-defying Vancouver Canucks advanced to the 1982 Stanley Cup final — only to be swept by the super-skilled, super-deep and defending champion New York Islanders — that summation from Stan Smyl is significant of the long slog to hockey’s Holy Grail.
“You think after that, I’ve still got about another eight years and I’ll get there,” he added. “So it does hurt. Were we good enough to beat them? Well, we were good enough to get there. And that was in our minds, so let’s give it a shot.”
It was thought to be a shot in the dark.
Not only had the Islanders topped the NHL with a 54-16-10 record, they had a trio of trigger-happy snipers in Mike Bossy (64 goals), Bryan Trottier (50) and John Tonelli (35). The Canucks countered with Thomas Gradin (37), Smyl (34) and Ivan Boldirev (33). The Islanders had a Vezina Trophy winner in Billy Smith and the Canucks had the unheralded Richard Brodeur.
“They had everything,” Smyl admitted. “But I remember one of their players telling me after the fact and after he had retired, that they wrote on their wall: ‘Be Ready To Work Against This Team.’ Their experience beat us in the end. They had been there and done that. They knew what it took and their skill was better all the way down the lineup.
“But if you were going to go to war, you would want to go with our guys. You knew what everyone was going to give every night and they weren’t going to change the way they played. A lunch-bucket type of team and that’s what people looked at. We had skill, we just didn’t have enough.”
However, the Canucks found some well-timed moxie when it mattered most.
They were nothing special to start the remarkable season. They finished second to the powerhouse Edmonton Oilers in the Smythe Division, but their mediocre 3033-17 record masked a series of events that would propel that club into legendary franchise status.
An improbable 7-0-2 run to finish the regular season started with a stunning 4-2 win in Montreal. It was followed the next game by coach Harry Neale being slapped with a 10-game suspension for leaving the bench to confront a fan. The overzealous patron didn’t have to negotiate a barrier to take a swing at Dave (Tiger) Williams, who had been pinned against the boards by Wilf Paiement. The suspension elevated assistant coach Roger Neilson to head-coach status. His passion for video instruction and structure helped the Canucks outscore the opposition 47-25 in that nine-game stretch and also blank teams twice. It was a recipe for post-season readiness.
But hang on, the story gets better.
In an optional skate at Britannia Arena a day before the playoffs, a playful wrestling match between Kevin McCarthy and Curt Fraser resulted in McCarthy breaking his ankle. It meant the captaincy would transfer to Smyl and that the club’s three top blue-liners — Rick Lanz, Jiri Bubla and McCarthy — were sporting leg casts.
“I was at the Pacific Coliseum doing an off-ice workout,” Smyl recalled. “All I heard was that he (McCarthy) was on the way to the hospital.”
It was an ominous entry into the post-season, but the Canucks swept the Calgary Flames and then watched the Los Angeles Kings stun the heavily favoured Oilers. Suddenly, there was an unlikely path to post-season promise.
The Canucks breezed by the Kings in five games and did the same to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Then came the Islanders and all the drama that surrounded Game 1 and 2 at Uniondale, N.Y.
The Canucks couldn’t get a hotel close to the rink and couldn’t catch a break.
They were up 5-4 in the third period and lost the opener 6-5 in overtime. And in Game 2, they had a 4-3 lead in the third period and lost 6-4.
Imagine if they won one of those first two games?
“You never know going back home,” Smyl said. “You think they’ve got the momentum, but either way, if we would have split it would have been interesting — that’s for sure.”
What it became was an emotional roller-coaster ride.
The Canucks were greeted by a mob scene at the airport when they returned to Vancouver and it took them two hours to snake through autograph seekers and well-wishers.
“I still have great memories of that,” Smyl said. “But in hindsight, the Isles flew in behind us after and we were still at the airport and they went to the drop-off level at departures. Their bus was waiting up top and they were gone. And we were still there.”
The adulation was amazing and it also applied immense pressure to make it a series in Game 3. After all, the Canucks were so close in Uniondale.
“We were right there,” Smyl said. “The first game was kind of feeling out and to see where we fit in with that group. We knew we could match them in the work ethic, but the talent was that much different. We just didn’t have it.”
It showed in Game 3, a revealing 3-0 loss.
“We didn’t touch the puck very much — they were that good,” Smyl recalled.
“They had a game plan and we were all caught up in the moment. It wears you down. You never think about being tired and you never want to use that. But we were tired physically and mentally. And they (Islanders) knew that.”
The Canucks dropped Game 4 by a 3-1 count as the Islanders claimed their third straight championship. They would win a fourth in 1983, but the Canucks won something else in that wild 1982 run: respect.
As the Canucks celebrate their 50th season, we’re looking back at the moments that stand out as the biggest in franchise history on the ice and off, good and a few bad. We will highlight the top moments from the 1970s through November, the ’80s in December, the ’90s in January, the ’00s in February and the ’10s in March.