Canucks and Beyond

Canucks vs Sharks: Failure Meets Failure

05/13/2011 at 2:29am EDT

Elliott Pap at the Vancouver Sun:

The Canucks and Sharks, two teams with a history of playoff failure. are meeting in the Western Conference final so one has to win, right? The Canucks haven’t been this far since 1994 while the Sharks were here just a year ago and face-planted four straight to the Chicago Blackhawks.

Despite advancing to this stage in 2011, neither team has shown a killer instinct. The Canucks needed four chances to close out the Blackhawks in round one and two to dispatch the pesky Nashville Predators in the second round. The Sharks, meanwhile, required two swings to banish the L.A. Kings and four to take care of Detroit. Their combined ‘close-out’ record this spring is 4-8, hardly awesome.

With that backdrop, it’s difficult to imagine one team making short work of the other. The Canucks had the better regular season record, winning twice in regulation and once in a shootout, while the Sharks’ lone victory was via the shootout. Expect this one to go the distance — and maybe to overtime in a seventh game.

Pap goes on to evaluate how the two teams stack up here.

My take?

On the bright side, the Canucks had a 3-0-1 record against the fish this year.

On the other hand, these remarks from Henrik Sedin, a few days back, are worth bearing in mind:

Q (NHL.com): Does regular season success matter now? You guys were 3-0-1 against San Jose and 2-0-2 against Detroit.

A (Henrik Sedin): No, I don’t think so. We had a lot of success against Chicago in past years, too, and they’ve still beaten us in the playoffs. It doesn’t really matter.

Game On, Sunday at 5pm PT.

I’ll have a full pre-series evaluation posted on Sunday morning.

And may the best team win.

Or the Canucks. Whatever. :)

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