The Canucks look poised for a long playoff run and it's because of who they don't want to let down.
DALLAS — There was a time when the loss of Alexander Edler, the Vancouver Canucks’ best defenceman this season, would have started the ball rolling downhill.
A time when things were good as long as things were good. But the first bit of adversity begat the second, which led to the third…
We now believe those days to be gone in Vancouver.
And we get that feeling because the Canucks are confident enough in themselves today to admit that there was a time when they weren’t ready to be champions.
"This year there is a big difference in the room," said Daniel Sedin, whose team moved into sole possession of first place in the NHL with a 4-1 win at Dallas on Tuesday night. "We’re holding each other accountable. We’re never happy… When we lose a game we bring things up right away — knowing that we need to be better. That’s why we’ve been so successful so far.
"In the past we’ve felt we need to step up in the playoffs, to play better. With this team, the key is to keep playing the same way."
It’s all upstairs, the attitude that allows a group of hockey players to graduate from hopeful winners to expectant ones.
Sometimes it magically happens in a month. Like the magical springs that Calgary had in 2004, and Edmonton enjoyed in 2006.
Those were pixie-dust runs that disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
Vancouver’s success has been a longer brew, but it’s hard not to believe it will simmer for much, much longer than one meteoric spring.
"This is my fifth year there, and I’ve sort of grown with this core group," began head coach Alain Vigneault, relaxing in the coaches’ office in Raleigh after his all-star game assignment. "We‘re better now. We’re better prepared. We’ve faced adversity, we’ve faced defeat, and I think we will learn from that. We’re ready for this opportunity."
The tradition in the National Hockey League is never to touch the Stanley Cup until you’ve won it. Some teams believe you shouldn’t even talk about it until the night you’ve finally won a conference championship.
It tells me the Canucks have matured however, when they show they aren’t scared of some bad karma that will befall them if they admit that the ultimate goal is the Stanley Cup.
Of course it’s the goal — why hide it?
"Most of the guys have been around for a while, been through the struggles of losing out in the second round," Sedin said. "Everyone wants to go a long way — hopefully all the way.
"We’re more than ready to go all the way."
So the question becomes, why now? Why not last year, when they had already suffered a second-round loss at the hands of Chicago?
The same fate befell the Canucks in 2010 that had befallen them in 2009. So why is this spring going to be different?
"It is being able to talk to each other," Sedin said. "If Manny Malhotra is doing something wrong, if Danny Sedin is doing something wrong, we can bring that up. It’s not yelling at each other. It’s talking to each other. ‘We should do this instead.’ Something else, that will make us more successful.
"This year we’ve tried to talk a lot. To sort things out."
For sure, they are more than ready to "sort out" the next 10-12 weeks without their top defenceman, Edler, than they were last season.
A year ago the Canucks would have rushed Sami Salo, who is now practicing with the team.
Today, general manager Mike Gillis’ acquisitions of Keith Ballard and Dan Hamhuis has afforded his team time to be very careful with an older, injury-prone defenceman coming off a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Vigneault knows he’ll need Salo more in April and May — and hopefully June — than in February or March.
"The last two years in the playoffs, at some point or another we used our seventh, eighth and ninth defencemen on our depth chart," Vigneault said. "For a team to go a long way and win in the playoffs, things have got to fall into place. We’ve got to stay healthy."
And if they do…?
"We are one of the teams with a legitimate chance to challenge for that cup," is as far as Vigneault is prepared to go. "We’ve been telling our guys, ‘if you want to challenge for that cup in June, you have to start doing the right things from Day 1.’
"And so far, everyone has been doing a real good job holding each other accountable."
