Despite winning Game 1, the Canucks will eventually need their producers to produce.
Let's make something plain: We don't expect the Vancouver Canucks to win every night.
These are the playoffs, and they're going to lose a few. It is a tournament filled with good teams that are all trying to win as badly as you are. That's why the average series goes six games.
The key to playoff success however, is to win the games you're supposed to win. The games where you out-shoot the other team 30-20, and out-chance them by (insert Mike Gillis percentage here).
Games when the other teams says, "That game could have easily been 7-0 if it wasn't for our goaltender," as Nashville centre Jerred Smithson said Thursday night
The Canucks delivered in Game 1 against Nashville, so we're not about to critique a win. Even if it was the most one-sided 1-0 game we've seen in some while, coming two nights after a Game 7 overtime, where the Canucks were the only 20 people in a building of 18,000 who seemed ready to go at puck drop.
But one goal? Like the other night against Chicago, when they needed overtime to score a second?
What happened to the highest scoring team in hockey?
"We're prepared to win games 1-0, 2-1," Henrik Sedin said after the game. "That's the sign of a good team."
Of that, there is no doubt.
But as we dip our toe into Round 2 with a game that was, once again, chalk full of chances that never grew up to be actual goals, there are a few disturbing trends that are beginning to show themselves. Like how Nashville's Pekka Rinne becomes the second straight goalie to look like Jacques Plante himself against Vancouver, a team that has scored eight goals in its last five games.
The National Hockey League's highest scoring team is averaging 2.12 goals per game in these playoffs. The league's best powerplay hasn't scored in three straight games -- two of them narrow, narrow victories.
That might get you past Nashville. It won't get you past Detroit, a team that will afford you one-quarter the scoring chances the Predators did in Game 1. Much to the disgust of captain Shea Weber, we might add.
"The biggest game of the year for us. And we don't show up. It shouldn't happen," Weber said. "You can see already -- there's a lot less time and space.
"If we don't pick it up, we're not going to be able to do anything."
The Preds did accomplish one thing on Thursday. They shut down Vancouver's top line, another act that's trending in these playoffs.
Chicago figured out how to eliminate the Sedin cycle by dropping both defencemen down low, then having the forwards come down to protect the net. Nashville obviously watched the film, and as much offence as Vancouver generated in Game 1, very little of it came off the Sedin cycle.
So this is where the twins have to raise their game. There has to be a Plan B for two players as fine as these, because in Game 1 at least, Nashville became the second straight opponent to eliminate Plan A.
"Tonight we had a lot of chances to put the puck in the net," Henrik said. "You can't get frustrated. We know the puck's going to be in sooner or later."
And no matter how good the rest of the team is, when the first line -- the Sedins and Mikael Samuelsson -- goes five games with a collective three points and a minus-19, you've got the beginnings of a problem. Because the competition only gets stiffer from here.
As in, Saturday night.
"It's a playoff game. We have to be better. No excuses. No nothing," Rinne said.
You know they're going to be. You know Vancouver has to be.
