Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Shane O'Brien kneels down in pain after taking a hit from the Blackhawks' Dustin Byfuglien's stick.

This is the moment when fans learn the important things about their team.

It is never easy to see something like this coming, even tougher the way the Chicago Blackhawks had walked into GM Place and rag-dolled the Vancouver Canucks in Games 3 and 4.

But the Canucks had no choice but to believe in themselves. Because it was pretty evident when you took the temperature around the National Hockey League on Saturday morning, nobody else believed — believes? — the Canucks will emerge now from Round 2, a glass ceiling this franchise might find itself addressing before the week is out.

So the Vancouver Canucks took a long look in the mirror on Saturday.

Shane O’Brien verbalized that "giving up six is not good enough," an obvious statement on Luongo’s and the team’s defensive play, while Alain Vigneault added that Luongo was losing this series to Antti Niemi. Hey — sometimes the truth hurts.

Ryan Johnson scolded every teammate not smart enough to maintain discipline, and he needed a wide brush to paint them all. It was that ol’ tired cliché: gut check time.

Personally, we love when a team hits this moment, because this is when a fan learns the important things about their team.

What happens after some fingers are pointed? Who is ready to take on the momentous task of beating Chicago three straight, and who is quietly planning his summer?

Can Shane O’Brien take a punch in a face that has been stitched up like a baseball, and not retaliate? Turns out he can. But first, he had the cut man glue the wound closed so he wouldn’t miss a shift, then took the stitches at the intermission.

Can Daniel Sedin take getting chopped down, and not fight back? Yep.

And can Roberto Luongo, your goalie in Vancouver for the next decade or more, give the Canucks the brand of goaltending is required to win more than one round per spring? Well, he did for Game 5 at least, and for now, that’s all that matters.

"We all knew we had to be better in front of him, he knew he had to be better in net, and it feeds out from him," O’Brien said after a 4-1 win. "When he’s on, we feel confident."

"I knew it was going to be important to have a good first period, make a couple of key saves," Luongo said. "I was able to do that, and we scored a couple of goals and that helped us get off to the start we wanted.

"(But) it’s a team game," he said. "We all had to step up, that’s the bottom line. We’re not going to get this done by one guy stepping up. We need 20 guys in here having a huge game and that’s what we did."

Somehow, what had been a track meet in Vancouver turned back into something far more deliberate in Game 5.

Baseball fans saw a perfect game that afternoon in Major League Baseball. Hockey fans saw a perfect road game pitched by the Canucks Sunday night.

"From the pace of the games we played up there in Vancouver, it was definitely a slower game tonight," said Blackhawks veteran center John Madden. "I think some of that had to do with them scoring some quick ones. They then sat back and chipped away."

"We had the one-game mentality," Vigneault said after the game. "We came up as a group and gave ourselves a chance."

Road teams have now won four of five games in this series. You figure it out, because like the rash of too-many-men penalties, we don’t have any explanations.

"Home ice advantage, I don’t know what it means anymore," said two-goal man Kevin Bieksa. "You go on the road, and you have maybe a different mentality of weathering storms and simplifying your game and maybe that benefits (road) teams."

The United Center crowd was eliminated just 59 seconds into the first period. It was never a factor in Game 5, as 1-0 turned into 2-0, which turned into a 3-0 score after 40 minutes. That lead was never remotely in danger, with the Canucks squeezing the vice grips on this game like a team that has found s new form of denial.

This time, they wouldn’t believe what so many thought, that this series was cooked after Game 4.

"They deserved to win that one," Jonathan Toews offered afterwards.

We are still a long ways away from either Canadian team moving on to the next round, with both the Canucks and Canadiens down 3-2. Sami Salo is hurt, and now the Canucks have to buck the trend and try and win a game at home.

Do they have what it takes to get this thing back to Chicago?

We can’t wait to find out.