Canucks Nation is one again.
The disastrous trip to Boston, during which the Canucks lost 8-1 and 4-0 to toss away their series lead, was pitting fan against fan, diehard loyalist against bandwagon jumper. A series made infamous by finger-pointing on the ice was now producing plenty of it off the ice.
Then last night, back at Rogers Arena, Roberto Luongo shut out the Bruins and Maxim Lapierre squeezed one past Tim Thomas to put the Canucks one win away from their first Stanley Cup. All was well again.
For two days, Luongo had been the focal point of this fan-on-fan conflict. My daughter and I were at Rogers Arena to hear the roar go up when Alain Vigneault decided Luongo was done in Game 4, and Cory Schneider appeared on the big screen, strapping on his mask. Word of this cheering got out, and the infighting across the city began.
A certain segment of Canuck fans insists that goalies be close to perfect. Narrow, low-scoring losses are allowed, but bad games are not. If a goalie has a bad game at a particularly important time, he simply is not the answer and never will be. Luongo’s brilliant Game 7 double-overtime win against Chicago wasn’t enough to convince these people, nor were his 53 saves in the Game 5 series clincher against San Jose. The doubters stayed quiet for a while after that, but pounced as soon as Boston gave them an opportunity.
The loyalists tend to overreact, too. A lot of them had misinterpreted the crowd’s reaction when Luongo got hooked. That cheer at Rogers Arena didn’t necessarily mean all those people had written off Luongo; some of them had, but I think most simply felt bringing in Schneider was the right move at the time, and it absolutely was. Nobody wants to sit through another 8-1 loss, and that’s where the game was headed.
I think Luongo is a great goalie who has bad games. Sometimes those bad games come in important games. But in these playoffs, the games in which he’s performed superbly have been more important than the ones in which he’s done the opposite. Friday’s Game 5 shutout was an example.
All day, the stakes seemed pretty clear: the winner of Game 5 would very likely win the Stanley Cup. A Boston win would force the Canucks to win Game 6 in a ridiculously hostile arena where they had just been outscored 12-1 over two games. That wasn’t going to happen. A Canucks win would mean the President’s Trophy winners were back, and had recovered their uniforms from those slow-footed imposters who wore them in Boston. They would then have two chances, including one at home, to win a single game.
And that’s where we are now. Alex Edler is hitting people like it’s early in the Chicago series. A 21-year-old rookie named Chris Tanev is bringing the smoothness and poise the Canucks lost when Dan Hamhuis got injured. Lapierre is doing his best impression of Nashville-series Ryan Kesler. And all the games from here on in are absolutely huge, which means Luongo should be just fine.
One more win, and all the fingers point at the sky.
