In a series full of enigmas, the biggest has been Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo, who unwisely gave the Bruins plenty of emotional ammo before Game 6 and then inexplicably turned into a sieve. (Reuters)

By Stu Hackel

So we’ll go to a seventh game in the Stanley Cup Final after Boston beat Vancouver 5-2 on Monday, and the only thing one can say for certain is that the last game of the season will be on Wednesday.

There’s no way to fully understand what has gone on in this series, one in which the home team always scores first and wins, the Canucks look like deserving champs at home and big-time chumps on the road, the Bruins sometimes throw the puck away like yesterday’s trash, sometimes more concerned with physical provocation (to which the Canucks don’t respond on the road) and seemingly more intent on hitting to injure than hitting to separate an opponent from the puck.

We want the Stanley Cup Final to be the best hockey of the year. This isn’t. It has been great theater, but the quality of play hasn’t equaled the drama. Neither of these teams nor their fans care, of course. They don’t award the Stanley Cup based on style points.
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Win or lose, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is the likely Conn Smythe winner. (Michael Ivins/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

With the Canucks back in Boston — site of their horror show Games 3 and 4 — and the Stanley Cup in the building, the Bruins will, as their coach Claude Julien says, hope “to create a Game 7.”

The B’s will have to be better than they were on Friday in Vancouver, when the Canucks showed the physical dimension that was missing from their play during the two previous games. The Canucks took every opportunity to smash Boston players, outhitting them 47-27, forcing numerous turnovers (NHL stats had the takeaways at 15-6 in the Canucks’ favor), tightening their defensive play while getting a very strong game from Roberto Luongo, and doing all sorts of things that seemed unimaginable after Vancouver’s two-game massacre in Boston. After Game 4, we wrote that Vancouver would need a massive turnaround to halt Boston’s huge grab of the series’ momentum and we felt somewhat skeptical that they could. But that’s just what they did.
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As the stakes, tension and desperation rise, the feisty, physical play of Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas could ignite more nastiness in a Cup final that has been blemished by it. (Greg M. Cooper/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

This dramatic, nasty and sometimes ugly Stanley Cup Final resumes tonight in Vancouver and the stakes are obvious for both the Canucks and Bruins. If the home team loses, it faces the prospect of traveling back to Boston with the B’s having a chance to win the Stanley Cup on home ice, where they crushed the Canucks in two straight games. If the visitors lose, it will halt their mighty momentum and put the Canucks on the verge of the championship.

We ventured a few thoughts on how the series has progressed over the first four games yesterday (If you missed that, here’s the link so you can catch up.) and while the series is tied 2-2, it feels more like a 2-0 lead for the Bruins, who sail into Vancouver with the wind at their backs. Whether the Canucks can dig deep and raise the level of their play to match and overcome what the B’s threw at them in Games 3 and 4 is the overriding question for everything that will happen tonight.
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Among the Canucks’ many headaches: Kevin Bieksa (3) and other key members of their defense corps look gassed or are injured and must find a way to halt Boston’s momentum. (Brian Jenkins/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Alain Vigneault said all the right — and predictable — things at the podium after his team lost Game 4 to the Bruins, 4-0, on Wednesday night to even the Stanley Cup final at two games apiece. Asked about his team’s confidence, he responded, “It’s real good. You know, if somebody would have told me at the beginning of the year that we could play for the Stanley Cup, best two-out-of-three series with home ice advantage in front of our fans, I would have taken those odds, I would have taken that anytime to play for the big prize.”

But what if that someone had also told him that his Canucks had just been outscored 12-1 in the last two games, the biggest two-game margin in Cup finals history, that his best players weren’t playing like his best players, that his defense corps had wilted, that his power play had gone south, that his goaltender had stopped making the big saves,  and that his team was being physically dominated and worn down? How much confidence could that inspire?
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The Bruins won’t last long if goalie Tim Thomas has to keep bailing them out. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The Stanley Cup Final moves to Boston tonight for Game 3 and the Bruins must win, as NBC/SI analyst Pierre McGuire explains in this SI.com video. In fact, the Bruins pretty much have to take the next two games at home or the series will return to Vancouver with the Canucks having a chance to win the Cup on home ice in Game 5. But the B’s can’t think about two wins just yet. “One at a time” has to be their mantra.

The Bruins have been accentuating the positive despite their 2-0 deficit. They speak about their resiliency, the fact that they’ve rallied from being down two before, and how they were in both games right up to the very end. All that is true, and with a few bounces, we could be at 1-1 or even 2-0 the other way. But Vancouver has been the better, more consistent team so far and had it not been for Tim Thomas, these games might not have been so close.
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Mark Recchi has been a major part of the Bruins’ power play struggles. (Brian Babineau/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Like Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, in which four people describe a crime in four very different ways, Game 1 of the Canucks-Bruins Stanley Cup Final evoked very different reactions. Some found it boring, lacking flow and intensity and overmanaged by the referees who called too many penalties. Others found it a rousing opener that provided one late game-winning goal, a number of big hits, spectacular saves, a few angry scrums and something for the world to nibble on as we head for Game 2.
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Given Vancouver’s firepower and Boston’s suspect power play, Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas will likely have to be at his acrobatic best to win the Stanley Cup. (Anne-Marie Sorvin/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

Sometime in the next two weeks, one of these teams will end a long Stanley Cup drought.  Each faced down a strong first-round challenge by a major rival and enters the final round  relatively healthy and with good depth. Both head coaches are Cup finals first-timers, they are former minor league teammates in the St. Louis Blues organization and each ran the bench for the Montreal Canadiens. But the similarities between the two foes are less striking than their differences.

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The revival of Henrik Sedin, here scoring the winning goal in Game 1, is just one of the things the Sharks will have to consider as they try to contain the Canucks. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The Sharks, who will try to even their series against the Canucks tonight, were happy for the two-day break after Sunday’s Game 1. Coming off their incredible series against the Red Wings — six one-goal games and one de facto one-goal game by virtue of an empty netter, the first time that has ever happened in Stanley Cup play — there was bound to be an emotional letdown if not some fatigue.

“You always want to get back on the horse as quick as you can, but in this case I think the extra day will help us,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said on Monday. “Take advantage of it today physically, and tomorrow we’ll have a real good skate and if we don’t perform better mentally and physically in Game 2, we’ll end up with the same results.”

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Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo, who is prone to occasional alarming lapses, will have to be consistently and especially sharp in the face of the Sharks’ attack. (Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

In a series that matches two teams with star-crossed postseason histories and similar styles, the Western Conference Championship could shape up as a classic. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Canucks are more rested, but the Sharks, the West’s No. 2 seed, have to feel pretty good about themselves after prevailing against an excellent and determined Red Wings team in what was the tightest seven-game series in Stanley Cup history: six games decided by one goal and one with an empty net goal. It’s hard to figure which of these teams has an advantage, so let’s mull it over and look at six important categories. (For the Eastern Conference Final analysis, click here.)

We’ll determine which team has an edge in each, but you can draw your own conclusions on the outcome. We stand by our practice of making no predictions as you never can tell what will happen in the playoffs. If want a prediction, SI.com’s Darren Eliot offers one here.
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The reeling Canucks sorely need some of the fire the Blackhawks caught from a devastating hit on Brent Seabrook (left) and the leadership of captain Jonathan Toews. (Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

With decades of disappointments behind them, the Vancouver Canucks and their fans had reason to believe that the team’s 40th season would be the one in which it would shake off its voodooed past like a dog shakes off water. They could point to the Presidents’ Trophy for the NHL’s best regular season record – a first in franchise history — as a sign that their luck had changed, and a deep roster that any GM would admire. Then the Canucks jumped out to a 3-0 series lead against the defending champion Blackhawks, the team that eliminated them in each of the last two seasons. They were on the train to glory.

That was eight days ago.

Tonight, the Canucks will fight for their playoff lives, having not won since as they flirt with the ignominious achievement of choking on a three-game lead in a best-of-seven series. (SI.com gallery: Epic playoff collapses.)  Their offensive motor has stalled, their defensive posture has been exposed, their special teams have not been very special and their goaltending appears to be in chaos.
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