CALGARY — You could tell this is all new to Eddie Lack, by how hard it hit him.
He had the far away eyes after the game, and a mind that opened itself to far too much reflection for a guy whose team isn’t dead yet.
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He spoke to a bank of cameras and reporters, but he may as well have been lying down on Bob Newhart’s couch.
“I felt normal coming into the game, and I didn’t really get any shots, you know?” he began. “And the ones that came, the first two, they went in. I didn’t feel like I could do anything about those two, but it got me chasing a bit. Just wasn’t my night.”
We love this kid as an interview subject. He’s honest, well spoken, smart, and waited patiently in a mostly vacated dressing room Tuesday night for Ryan Miller’s media scrum to end before his could begin.
And then he bared his hockey soul.
“The first two went, it’s two goals on four shots. Then you start over-challenging. You want it so much,” he said, with a wry smile. “But, yeah, goaltending doesn’t work that way.”
Lack had stumbled into his big chance to be a playoff starter when Ryan Miller’s knee injury left the job open. He’s been very good — not the best goalie in this series, but good — until he committed that cardinal sin of goaltending at the 19:18 mark of the opening period.
He let in The Next One.
Calgary’s first goal was unstoppable, a lovely cross-slot pass by Dennis Wideman on the powerplay, for a Johnny Gaudreau back-door one-timer. Nobody stops that puck, nor the second goal, a deft deflection of a Wideman blast by Jiri Hudler, who was standing alone in the low slot.
But this is what happens to young goalies in their first playoff run. The misfortune of two quality goals eats away at them, and morphs into the goal that the legendary playoff goalies never allow: The Next One.
“I was over-committing to the shot,” he said of TJ Brodie’s blast off the right side. “I slid over, and I slid a little bit too far. It opened up. The goal was credited to Sam Bennett, but I think it would have gone in anyway. It’s just a shot I’ve got to have.”
There are a lot of things the Canucks feel they have to have, and most have ended up in Calgary’s possession over the course of this series. Not the least of which is a commanding 3-1 series lead, after this 3-1 Game 4 in which every goal was scored in the opening period.
The chasm between young and old has begun to open even wider through these two games at the Saddledome, and we’ll let you guess which team has claimed which mantle. Calgary is faster, more physical, more in charge of the tempo, and despite the fact goalie Jonas Hiller has left plenty of rebounds lying around his crease, Vancouver has not been able to make him pay.
“It wasn’t a back-and-forth game,” said Kevin Bieksa, the warrior on the Canucks’ blueline who is ageing before our eyes in this series. “There weren’t a lot of chances, a lot of shots on net. It was one of those games where you just have to get to the front of the net. We did a little bit towards the end of the game, but we’re not in the dirty areas enough right now.
“We’re scoring one, maybe two goals a game right now. That’s not going to win you many games in the playoffs.”
It’s nigh impossible to see how this Canucks team can turn a series around against a super-charged opponent, with Alex Burrows seemingly gone for the series with what is reported as a broken rib, and fellow penalty killer Brad Richardson also missing Game 4 with injury.
The Sedins scored their second goal in four games when Henrik’s pass went five-hole off of a sprawling Kris Russell, but the two 34-year-olds have only provided two goals in 240 minutes of hockey this spring. We’re not sure we saw the Sedin Cycle for more than a total of 30 seconds here in Calgary, a bellwether for when they’re on their game.
They’re not, and the Canucks are in big trouble in this series.
The rare positive note came from goalie Ryan Miller, who played very well in the final 40 minutes. Which means we’ve probably seen the last of Lack.
And if things don’t change markedly, we’ll soon say the same of the Canucks.
