Playoffs are different from regular season. During the season opponents barely have enough to figure out who they play next let alone play an intense and highly focused strategic style. In the playoffs a team focuses on dissecting the opponents game. Vancouver has relied on one line to generate offense all year.
Your right, when playoffs roll around, the teams tighten up, and even the teams who have played run and gun all year, better learn how to keep the scoring down, the canucks have been playing that type of hockey all year, and as far as one scoring line, he has changed the lines around so much, as the team was different than in the past, the coach was new, and he had to figure out who would play well with who, the only one who can't seem to fit in on a line, and lead it, is Naslund, he's like the odd man out.
Come up with a plan to shut them down and that throws a serious monkey wrench into what has made them in part successful. You can't expect to win a cup when one line amounts to all of the offense. You can't win zero-zero. There are no shoot outs. Secondary scoring during regulation time is a must. A goal, any kind of goal, has to happen once in awhile.
And, Dallas is no different. Same kind of team. The Cooke Morrison line was doing some scoring. The scoring has been coming from a lot of different players, and of course the
twins doing most of it. Naslund doing none. We are playing a team the same as us, same
history all year.
This team has had its heiny saved by Luongo often this year. I think we had the #10 goalie in the world instead of one in the top 2 or 3 this team wouldn't be in the playoffs.
And neither would many others teams, including Dallas, the goalie is just another member
of the team, and the teams with the best goalies usually move on. Luongo is part of the team, not one person who is winning by himself, they do it together, and as I mentioned before, he played 5 or 6 years and never took any team to playoffs, so he had some help
this year. He has always played as well as he did this year, and never gone to playoffs.
However, they still have a chance to win the next game. To do so they need to be better than they have been for most of this series
Until this game Canucks and Dallas had the same amount of goals for, approx. the same kind of goal keeping, and after 6 games, they are even, can't get much closer than that.
Whoever loses on Monday, will have been beaten by their twin, and it is a good training
ground for further playoffs, as good defensive hockey is playoff hockey. But, yes, our
scoring has been shut down in the last couple of games, so hopefully they can get at least 2 or 3 goals, as against Dallas, that is probably all you need, same with us.
We need Cooke and Kesler to do tough checking against their defense, and we don't have
them, but from what I hear they won't have Zubov next game, so that will help our side.
Bieksa has been a good scoring defencemen all year, but I think he has 'tightened' up
a lot in playoffs, he's so young, and so much is expected from him, the veteran guys have
to 'lead' this team, along with Luongo. Which ever team gets through this series will have
their hands full with Anaheim, as their best players are being their players, and our are not.
If we can't at least score 2 goals in the next game we will lose, and against Dallas they
might only need one.
Even as strong as Anaheim is offensively, after you get by Neidermeyer and Pronger, they don't have near as good a defense as Dallas, as
Dallas probably has one of the best defense groups in the NHL, and so do we.
