Canucks over-delivered in the regular season, underachieved in playoffs

Only the Sedins rose to the occasion against the blue-collar Flames,

In repudiation of the John Tortorella season, the Vancouver Canucks’ year ended Saturday against a team that overplayed its top players, defended by collapsing around its net, blocked shots and hammered opponents — everything Vancouver’s former coach preached.

And if a first-round playoff loss to that style of Calgary Flames is not ironic enough, the Canucks managed in those six games to further enrage or disillusion fans who thought last fall that Vancouver had no chance of even making it to the Stanley Cup tournament.

The Canucks over-delivered in the regular season, then underachieved in the playoffs. The return of playoff hockey should have been celebrated in Vancouver. Instead, it feels like the first 82 games were merely a setup to make the final six more painful.

And even by the franchise’s long-established standard of springtime disappointment, the Canucks’ ability to terminate their National Hockey League season in Calgary by blowing a 3-0 lead and losing 7-4 Saturday was truly breathtaking. That three-goal turnaround beautifully symbolized both teams.

Starting with the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, the Canucks have lost four straight series in which they were favoured and are 3-14 in their last 17 playoff games. The Flames, relying on three defencemen, a recycled goalie, a first line that slept through the first five games at even strength, and a human missile no one had heard of until two weeks ago, won a series for the first time since 2004 after making the playoffs for the first time since 2009.

And they did it without their best player, injured captain Mark Giordano.

In a series in which Vancouver was unlucky enough to be favoured, the Canucks had Daniel and Henrik Sedin. The Flames had everything else.

The Sedins dominated their shifts but couldn’t score enough to lift a Vancouver team that had so little else going for it.

The Flames had better goaltending, better special teams, deeper scoring, more unexpected heroes and Michael Ferland, who battered the Canucks with impunity. And, it must be said, the Flames had better coaching.

Even when Calgary boss Bob Hartley made what looked like mistakes, like yanking starter Jonas Hiller at 2-0 Saturday despite the goalie’s outstanding series, things turned out all right for the Flames.

Canucks coach Willie Desjardins, the anti-Torts, was an NHL rookie at age 57 but brought with him a pile of coaching experience and an American Hockey League championship from last season. But in his first NHL playoff series, he failed to maximize his best players and was slow to modify a blueprint that earned his team 101 points in the regular season.

The Sedins rarely got to skate at even strength with the Canucks’ one pure finisher, winger Radim Vrbata, who struggled to make himself relevant and looked like the player who had six goals in 36 career playoff games before coming to Vancouver as a free agent to, you know, play with the Sedins.

Rookie centre Bo Horvat’s reward for being “one of their best forwards if not their best,” according to Flames winger David Jones, was an additional 25 seconds of ice time — 12:40 instead of 12:15.

It was the same on defence. Easily Vancouver’s best pairing, Alex Edler (23:40) and Chris Tanev (22:00) played essentially the same minutes they did during the regular season.

Many things that went right in the regular season, were wrong in the playoffs. A lot of goodwill from fans was spent in six games.