Canucks kept finding ways to win
PLAYOFF BOUND: Coach Desjardins says his team rallied in games all season when things were going south
Most of the players admitted they weren’t following the game too closely. Some were putting their kids to bed. Some were entertaining friends. Others had just disconnected from the hockey world. Then cellphones started pinging like hail on a car roof. Then the word started spreading. Have you seen the score from Edmonton? Do you know what the Oilers are doing to the Kings?
By the end of the game, a small but giddy group of Canucks were fully engaged in the Oilers’ gift of a win over the defending Stanley Cup champions; a win that put them into the playoffs. On Wednesday, those same players had their business faces back on and were saying they’ve simply reached their first goal for this season.
But when you think back to where this team was a year ago, and where they are now. you know this moment meant something a little more.
“People thought we were going to collapse and start losing games and we stuck with it,” said Henrik Sedin. “And it was how we won games with different guys stepping up every night. It’s a great felling. We believe we can beat anyone. We’re not done here. That’s something we can bring with us.”
Team Swagger. And who knows, if they keep this up they can go back to being the most-hated team in hockey sometime around the end of May.
“We wanted to prove a lot of people wrong about what happened last year,” said Jannik Hansen “We haven’t gotten there by being lucky.”
Under ideal circumstances, the Canucks would have celebrated their big moment on the ice at Rogers Arena with 18,000 fans singing hosannas and every player sharing in the joy. But this being the Canucks, it had to be different. Tuesday night, the Oilers bounced the Kings 4-2, which isn’t quite the Washington Generals beating the Globetrotters but it’s close.
It also put the Canucks into the playoffs and with wins over Arizona and their new best friends from Edmonton in their final two games of the regular season, they can clinch second place in the Pacific Division and home ice in the playoffs. Again, maybe it’s a trifle early to start planning the parade route, but this achievement is still significant on about 47 different levels. So take a minute and enjoy it.
Then start worrying about everything that can go wrong, especially the power play. Don’t get us started on the power play.
“I was pretty excited, but I’m not going to lie to you,” said Alex Burrows. “I thought the Kings were going to come back. They always seem to find a way to win those games. It was nice to see them fall on the wrong side and us on the good side.
“We talked about it. But that was only one of our goals. We have bigger goals going forward. We have to start thinking about those.”
Maybe, but let’s just linger here for a minute. Last season Burrows scored five goals in an injury-plagued campaign, then learned coach John Tortorella recommended he should be bought out. This year Burrows is back up to 18 goals and has been an invaluable contributor.
He’s hardly alone in the bounceback department. With two games left, Henrik has 19 more points than he had last season and Daniel has 25 more. Alex Edler was minus-35 last season. This year he’s plus-10. Last year, Eddie Lack broke down when he was forced to carry the workload down the stretch. This season, he’s the single biggest reason the Canucks maintained their place in the standings when goalie Ryan Miller went down in late February.
“It’s been like that the whole year,” said Daniel. “When we had our backs against the wall, everyone stepped up and played better. That’s the most rewarding thing about this.”
If there are two words to describe this Canucks’ team they are resourceful and resilient and that brings us around to Willie Desjardins. As Canucks fans have learned, the head coach isn’t exactly an open book when it comes to his innermost feelings, but on Wednesday he raised the curtain and revealed something of himself and what this meant to him.
“It’s been a long season,” said Desjardins. “You never allow yourself to think about getting in. For me, you just lose your edge and I don’t want to lose my edge.”
He continued in this vein for a while, talking about the grind of the regular season, talking about the fixation on the playoffs and how you live with it for six months. Then he talked about three or four road trips that defined the team; trips that the Canucks started when they weren’t at their best, but always found a way to deliver results.
He was asked what stands out about this team. His team.
“(It) has the ability to win games where you’re thinking: ‘They’re not going the right way now. This is going to be tough,’ ” he said. “Whenever you have a team like that it makes it special. They found a way when things get tough.”
And that’s worth celebrating.