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'94 or 2011? - for those fans that have experienced both...


Just Jimmy

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I think I echo most of the people here when I say that it's always better to see the underdog win. That's what made 94 so magical. 2011 had the perfect storm of things that stopped our beloved Nucks from winning.

-Manny's eye

-Samuelsson getting injured

-Hamhuis getting injured

-Rome hit on Horton

-refs swallowing their whistles because of all the diving

I make the argument that if any one of these doesn't happen, we would have a cup banner hanging from Rogers Arena!

Manny's steadfast and hard play would have been so useful vs Boston. He just wasn't the same when he got the eye injury.

Samuelsson was that veteran cup winning presence that was supposed to calm the room down. I think if he was there in the finals, the team probably would have stopped diving.

Losing your #1 solid defenseman on the back end is very hard for any team to keep going with. Nevermind make it to game 7!

We all know what happened with the Rome hit.

If the team just shut up and played the game hard, they may have made it out with a cup. I bet there would have been more calls to go our way as well!

The perfect storm. It was as if we were destined to not win the cup in 2011. When certain intangibles go away, it's too hard to come back from!

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'82: How far was Brodeur going to take us? He kept on going right to the finals. What a player the Steamer was. Ya, the Canucks were the better team in the first 2 games on the Island.

'94: It was the heart breaker. Van should have won it all as the refs put their whistles away. It will be the best team Van ever iced IMHO until the current version wins a CUP. It had the two best Canucks ever in Linden and Bure. Linden for heart and Bure for incredible talent. Van was robbed as the NHL was having w*t dreams thinking about the NYR winning a CUP. It sucked!

'11: Van had the CUP won but could not answer the bell when it counted. They had no response to the Bruins physicality. Well, actually they did Aaron Rome. But they put a stop to that in a hurry didn't they?

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I understand there was the riot and everything after we lost in Game 7.. but really? The atmosphere up to and until that point was amazing, and IMO unforgettable. Watching the games on the big screens outside was surreal. And I certainly would not have wanted to lose to Chicago in the first round.. I still believe if that happened, the whole organization would've been blown up.

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I actually have been thinking about this a lot and because of some of your answers here and some of the things said in the other thread I think I figured out why 2011 hurt so much more for me then 1994 did. Like I said in the other thread in 1994 after the loss I was sad but also proud of the team. I was proud to be a Canuck fan because the team was the underdogs so there was still so much respect (or so it seemed) from everyone for Vancouver. 2011 was different it HURT so much. It hurt because I had already survived a loss so this time was suppose to be different. This time we were the BEST team in the NHL we were the best team Vancouver had ever had the Cup was supposed to be ours.

The officiating was horrible. Yes Rome's hit was a bit late and yes Horton was hurt on that play but I still do not think Rome deserved to be tossed from the rest of the Finals. I think that moment is what changed the momentum for the Bruins but the fact that Rome had the book thrown at him actually hurt the Canucks. Now I am not AV I don't think Rome was the best thing ever to happen to Vancouver but to have a player make one bad mistake and have him tossed from the rest of the finals it just didn't sit right with me, and I doubt it sat right with the team. Then there was the incident with Raymond. The Bruins broke his back and the Bruin fans just sat their and jeered him, plus their was nothing. No Suspension, Nothing. They broke his back and the refs just pretended it was a 'hockey play'. I like Raymond just fine, I am glad he is playing better right now but I am not a huge Raymond fan, I am not being a homer here, when I watch the replays of that hit I cringe. The Bruin player (sorry can't remember who it was) backed Raymond into the boards then hit him. I do not see how that is a hockey play. Just thinking about it right now really makes my blood boil. Then you had the way the Sedins were treated. It was disgusting and very unsportsman like. The refs ignoring the play, ignoring how our best players were treated even giving us penalties for speaking up against it. Disgusting!

Then the Riot, the Riot that took that hurt and made it 10000% worse. Like I said before In the other thread I grew up in Campbell River so 1994's riot didn't seem as real and didn't affect me like 2011's. I was downtown when the Riot broke out. I wasn't in the area with the screens because that area was full before I got downtown so I guess in a way that was a blessing. I had watched all the rest of the Finals downtown and still have fond memories of watching them on the big screens and just how amazing that experience was. I feel really sad because I know that we will never have something like that set up downtown ever again. I feel angry because people who 'were not real fans' ruined it for the rest of us. Anyways I was downtown when the riot started, so I saw the smoke fill the sky as we drove out of the city but even though I had seen 'fans' with signs saying Riot 2011( even before the game had started) I still didn't really realize what that smoke meant. It wasn't till I was safe at home and I started to get the phone calls from my family and my friends wondering if I was safe because they knew I had watched the game downtown that I knew. Then I turned on the tv and watched my city burn and the hurt became even worse. I still get weepy when I think about it.Then the media reports came in the fact that instead of using the images of the Canucks looking worn out, broken, Crying (that video of Kes still breaks my heart) instead of using that to show how hard we fought and that we came up short the media made us look like babies, they made the Bruins (who I really think cheated in a sense) as these great heroes who had saved the world from the big bad evil Canucks........ Yeah 2011 was way worse!

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The 1994 team had just a few really good players and the rest were so hard working and disciplined. Every player put in 100% and were playing at their optimum. Nobody expected them to go far, but they just kept plugging away. None of the silly stuff that happened in 2011. No diving or antics on the ice and fairly good refs. Just good honest hockey.

Up until the Boston series, I quite enjoyed the 2011 run. The Boston series was just plain awful in so many ways. Still feeling bitter, I guess.

Oh,yeah...and then there was the riot. Something that Nuck fans will never be allowed to forget.

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1994, we never expected. It was a team that had a whole bunch of players working their butts off, for every shift of every game. And somehow prevailed, over what seemed like insurmountable odds. Coming back from 3-1 series deficits 3 times, winning many of those series clinchers in overtime. Such exciting stuff. A true battle of the underdogs. Some say we only lost because the Rangers asked for an extra day off for their players in between games 6 and 7, and since we had all the momentum from the comeback we were mounting, that dissipated.

2011 was different, we were a team that deserved to be there, and were systematically beating our opposition. We seemed to get get better as the rounds went on. The expectations were high after finishing 1st overall, but then in the finals we ran into some crazy combination of compounding injuries, overly-biased refereeing (more than usual) a lack of substantial effort by some of our go-to guys, and a truly determined and amazing play of Thomas.

They were both thrilling in their own ways, they are both unforgettable, can't really compare them except that the end goal was the same, and both times we came THIS close to raising the cup!

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2011 was more of a let down, in my opinion, though I enjoyed the '94 run more, because it was a bit of a Cinderella, and no one really expected them to win. The Luongo meltdown, and the team meltdown in the last half of the finals was very disappointing

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The 1994 playoff run was so unexpected, and I remember the whole city was a buzz and when the Canucks would win a playoff game, people came right out of their homes a hootin' and hollern', at the time we lived just off busy 41st Avenue in Vancouver......they'd be waving towels of all shapes and sizes, at passing cars...who responded with honks and flag waving....it was a magical run imo.

2011 was just a let down, very disappointing.

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1982 and 1994 were pretty fluky runs: we had teams that got hot but weren't "legitimate contenders" like our 2011 team. The 1994 team underachieved during the regular season, a bit like LA last year except they didn't win it all. 2011 was by far the biggest disappointment because the team had really earned the right to be in that position over a couple of years and couldn't get it done in the face of pressure, injuries, and terrible refereeing.

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