[Article] Elliotte Friedman: “WE KNEW WE HAD SOMETHING” This is the story of how the greatest team in Vancouver Canucks history was built. In the words of the people who were there.

[alt kilgore]

On 4/21/2020 at 11:44 PM, DownUndaCanuck said:

but it's a long way to go for Pettersson and Miller to become 100pt players, Horvat to win a Selke and Demko to be a 47-win Vezina nominee...

 

I think Horvat has a better shot at the Lady Byng. 

[Pete M]

2011 Canucks remind me of the 2019 Lightning....dominant and tenacious...similar to how JT Miller plays. If the other players follow how JT plays....we will be dominant again.

[Baratheon]

3 hours ago, kilgore said:

I wouldn't blame the Sedins for losing the series either.  They were banged up as much as anyone. It was mostly the loss of key players due to injury from previous series. I'd include Rome in there as well, with so many other players out, we needed that size at least. So they had not much secondary support on the ice.

 

But I take umbrage with your its "called drawing a penalty".  Daniel got a ten minute misconduct out of that for daring to tell Sutherland to do his job. How much did that 10 minutes without him on the ice alter the game result? A roughing penalty would only have him off for 2 min. and even a fighting major, which would never have happened, would only have been 5.  That was not playing "correctly". Not for a SCF game. And not after it was clear that the refs had put away their whistles for the season. AV should have recognized this and abandoned the "turn the other cheek, we'll make them pay on the PP" strategy. Because for one thing, when they got a PP, they were so rattled and cowed by the Bruins no-consequence abuse, which finally drew the PP, that they couldn't refocus instantly in time for two minutes of confident dominant play. One result was a killer short handed goal in game 7. That kind of trepidation indirectly was a cause of our downfall.

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I agree with some of this.  Agree to disagree with the rest!  "Daniel got a ten minute misconduct out of that for daring to tell Sutherland to do his job." Yep that more or less proves my point.  "That was not playing "correctly". Not for a SCF game. And not after it was clear that the refs had put away their whistles for the season." The whistles had clearly been put away for one team only.

 

To be honest though I am a little too burnt out from 2011 memories to try to make a rational argument.  Normally I am confident that I can represent where I am coming from well but in this case probably not.  I need to go back to burying these memories deep deep down haha.

[alt kilgore]

20 hours ago, Baratheon said:

To be honest though I am a little too burnt out from 2011 memories to try to make a rational argument.  Normally I am confident that I can represent where I am coming from well but in this case probably not.  I need to go back to burying these memories deep deep down haha.

ha You and me both.  Just so much more time on our hands, no sports. Inevitably 2011 gets brought up again. And it won't be the last. Until we win a freakin Cup here.  It will be great one day to rehash our Stanley Cup win (this Summer!!!! ) one day. Relive every moment and go through each game with a fine tooth comb. Without a tragedy at the end. 

[Ghostsof1915]

Man can't believe I forgot guys like Oreskovitch, Torres, Lappy. I missed Lappy, so sad that Manny had that injury before the playoffs. Vancouver could have used his ability on face-offs and offence even on 3rd and 4th line in 2011. 

 

What a trip down on memory lane when they rebroadcast the games from 2011 playoffs. 

[IBatch]

On 4/21/2020 at 1:10 PM, Baratheon said:

Man you guys are killing me with this thread.  Reminding me of all the things that irritated me most.  The Sedins should not be blamed for that series.  They absolutely played correctly.  That clip that people play of Daniel getting punched is called drawing a penalty.  Vancouver actually did a good job of getting under the Bruins skin.  The idea is that the Bruins will then start to be undisciplined and that's exactly what happened.  The refs just happened to let them get away with it rather than do their jobs.  

 

I am a boxing guy!  Throwing hands is kind of my jam.  So it's weird for me to find myself on the opposite side of the "toughness" crowd.  I have just never seen the criticisms of the 2011 team presented in a compelling enough way that I believe it.  We got screwed guys.  It's as simple as that.  If anyone needs to do a better job of standing up for the team it's us fans and not the players. 

Yep.  We can’t be sore losers forever.   It worked (drawing penalties) the refs just weren’t willing to go much past the 2-1 margin we got.   We don’t talk enough about how we simply couldn’t score a goal on Thomas 5 on 5 - not that we could score 5-4 either.   It was strategy and the longer the series went on, the more PPs we needed.   Maybe it’s the only reason we even got to game 7 so let’s not worry too much about the past.
 

That said If anyone wants to scrape another scab off and pick at it - Messier cross-checking Momesso comes to mind - as does Bure’s ejection for a minor high stick when he was all over them that game and had them on their heels...look now I’m doing it too ha ha. 

[MikeyD]

One thing that always bothers me is that hardly anybody ever mentions that the Sedins had injuries to their backs in the finals. I remember distinctly seeing both of them getting injections into their backs pre-game in one of the Boston games. 7 of our top 9 players were injured on offense and 4 out of our top 6 defenseman were injured. Absolutely decimated. 

[lmm]

On 4/19/2020 at 3:35 PM, kilgore said:

It will be great one day, hopefully, to not have to immortalize and fawn over our SCF losses.  And instead re-live the glory of one, (or more!) Stanley Cups!  

I wonder if Buffalo fans revere and glorify their '75 and '99 SCF losses as much as we do with our losses?

 

(I was going to mention St. Louis, and their fans, and how much they ever idolized their own previous SCF appearances before last season, but a very odd history with them I found out or forgot about.  Their only other SCF appearances other than last season were in their very first 3 seasons back to back to back. '67 - '70.  In all of them they were swept. By Canadiens twice, and then Boston. Now THAT must have sucked then of course, but also in the years/decades that followed.)

They have the Bills

[Maddogy]

When you score 5 goals in 4 games you were not good enough, regardless of injuries, goal tending or refs. The Bruins were more tenacious and mentally tough. They elevated their play when it counted. The better team won that year. 

 

What was inexcusable is how Mike Gillis failed to replenish the team through the draft like Boston did later on. He also botched the best goal tending tandem in team history. 

 

The 2011 team was short lived. They could not maintain their window of contention for long. The Sedins took too long to learn how to dominate. 

Edited May 29, 2020 by Maddogy

[Rindiculous]

22 hours ago, Maddogy said:

When you score 5 goals in 4 games you were not good enough, regardless of injuries, goal tending or refs. The Bruins were more tenacious and mentally tough. They elevated their play when it counted. The better team won that year. 

 

What was inexcusable is how Mike Gillis failed to replenish the team through the draft like Boston did later on. He also botched the best goal tending tandem in team history. 

 

The 2011 team was short lived. They could not maintain their window of contention for long. The Sedins took too long to learn how to dominate. 

Yah the Canucks decided to play to Boston’s style rather than their own style, however when basically three quarters of all of your starting lineup is injured, while the opposing team has been pretty lucky at avoiding injuries, it’s really gotta hurt cause the Canucks were the far superior team to the Bruins that year if the games were played on an even footing.

[Baggins]

On 4/25/2020 at 1:43 PM, kilgore said:

I wouldn't blame the Sedins for losing the series either.  They were banged up as much as anyone. It was mostly the loss of key players due to injury from previous series. I'd include Rome in there as well, with so many other players out, we needed that size at least. So they had not much secondary support on the ice.

 

But I take umbrage with your its "called drawing a penalty".  Daniel got a ten minute misconduct out of that for daring to tell Sutherland to do his job. How much did that 10 minutes without him on the ice alter the game result? A roughing penalty would only have him off for 2 min. and even a fighting major, which would never have happened, would only have been 5.  That was not playing "correctly". Not for a SCF game. And not after it was clear that the refs had put away their whistles for the season. AV should have recognized this and abandoned the "turn the other cheek, we'll make them pay on the PP" strategy. Because for one thing, when they got a PP, they were so rattled and cowed by the Bruins no-consequence abuse, which finally drew the PP, that they couldn't refocus instantly in time for two minutes of confident dominant play. One result was a killer short handed goal in game 7. That kind of trepidation indirectly was a cause of our downfall.

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It wasn't just the players out though. Kesler was playing with both a shoulder and groin injury, Higgins on a broken foot, Edler with broken fingers, Bieksa with a bruised acl, Ehrhoff with a shoulder bad enough he avoided contact whenever he could. Losing both Hamhuis and Rome in the final was really just the topper. I still believe if they got there even reasonably healthy they would have taken the series. But you can only take so many injuries before that mountain just becomes too high. The final factor after injuries was goaltending. Thomas was on fire and kept his team in all 7 games. 

 

That misconduct was a terrible call. Players get away with saying far more and far worse without a misconduct than what Danny said to the ref. Just another bogus call in the series.But what most either forget, or choose to ignore, is Vigneault preached discipline throughout. Let the other guy take the penalty. The Sedins always led by example and would of course follow what the coach preached. And all the other guys on the ice were already tied up with other Bruins. To me it's just self righteous ego and macho bravado blowing it out of proportion. 

[Baggins]

On 5/24/2020 at 11:17 PM, lmm said:

They have the Bills

We have the Lions 

[Baggins]

On 4/19/2020 at 3:35 PM, kilgore said:

(I was going to mention St. Louis, and their fans, and how much they ever idolized their own previous SCF appearances before last season, but a very odd history with them I found out or forgot about.  Their only other SCF appearances other than last season were in their very first 3 seasons back to back to back. '67 - '70.  In all of them they were swept. By Canadiens twice, and then Boston. Now THAT must have sucked then of course, but also in the years/decades that followed.)

In fairness the expansion Blues were serious longshots to win the cup those first three years. The original six were in one division and all 6 expansion teams in the other. The winner of each division meeting in the finals. Guaranteeing an expansion team in the finals for those three years. If the Blues had been in the O-6 division those three seasons their point total would have only put them in the playoffs once as fourth seed. For those three years the original six conference final was realistically the Stanley Cup final.

 

The original six weren't mixed in divisions until the Vancouver and Buffalo expansion. Ironically the Canucks went in the Eastern Conference. The only original 6 team moved to the expansion west division was Chicago who easily won the division after having won the original 6 division the previous regular season. Needless to say Chicago won in the playoffs to advance to the SCF losing to the Bruins.

[morgo]

On 5/29/2020 at 12:44 PM, Maddogy said:

The better team won that year.

No.  They.  Didn't.

[lmm]

14 hours ago, Baggins said:

We have the Lions 

we have the Canucks

[alt kilgore]

14 hours ago, Baggins said:

It wasn't just the players out though. Kesler was playing with both a shoulder and groin injury, Higgins on a broken foot, Edler with broken fingers, Bieksa with a bruised acl, Ehrhoff with a shoulder bad enough he avoided contact whenever he could. Losing both Hamhuis and Rome in the final was really just the topper. I still believe if they got there even reasonably healthy they would have taken the series. But you can only take so many injuries before that mountain just becomes too high. The final factor after injuries was goaltending. Thomas was on fire and kept his team in all 7 games. 

 

That misconduct was a terrible call. Players get away with saying far more and far worse without a misconduct than what Danny said to the ref. Just another bogus call in the series.But what most either forget, or choose to ignore, is Vigneault preached discipline throughout. Let the other guy take the penalty. The Sedins always led by example and would of course follow what the coach preached. And all the other guys on the ice were already tied up with other Bruins. To me it's just self righteous ego and macho bravado blowing it out of proportion. 

Agreed about the injuries too.  I should have added that.  

But there are moments in big playoff games like this, on ice level, (even if only 6 inches lower) where players have to be able to access and react based on who is on the ice, what kind of reffing is happening, how an action, or lack of an action, affects your team mates.  All in a few seconds, without the coach whispering in your ear. And as one of the team leaders, know when to at least pretend to be someone who won't be pushed around. In other words, there are exceptions to the rule. Linden rarely got into a fight, and you could see it wasn't his forte, but he did when he had to. 

 

The turn-the-other-cheek worked for them in the regular season, but they failed to recognize that the SCF was and is a whole different animal, where refs like Sutherland don't respect that kind of intellectual strategy.  AV was a smart coach. He molded his system based on the types of players and/or talent his team leaders had. Its what all good coaches do. He knew that the smartest way to coach a Sedin led team was the "discipline" system, because he knew they would be great at that. But I think that even AV would have cheered Daniel on if he'd punched back in that instance.  Not for Daniel's sake but for the rest of the team's sake looking on. I'm a lover not a fighter too. I probably would have been whining to the ref as well. But I expect different from a hockey player on my favourite team in such a high stakes game. I detest pointless "macho bravado", but in all honesty, that can be a rallying cry for a hockey team composed of players who, most of them at least, were brought up playing with that mind set. Whether I would do it personally in that situation or not, is n/a

[Baggins]

3 hours ago, kilgore said:

Agreed about the injuries too.  I should have added that.  

But there are moments in big playoff games like this, on ice level, (even if only 6 inches lower) where players have to be able to access and react based on who is on the ice, what kind of reffing is happening, how an action, or lack of an action, affects your team mates.  All in a few seconds, without the coach whispering in your ear. And as one of the team leaders, know when to at least pretend to be someone who won't be pushed around. In other words, there are exceptions to the rule. Linden rarely got into a fight, and you could see it wasn't his forte, but he did when he had to. 

 

The turn-the-other-cheek worked for them in the regular season, but they failed to recognize that the SCF was and is a whole different animal, where refs like Sutherland don't respect that kind of intellectual strategy.  AV was a smart coach. He molded his system based on the types of players and/or talent his team leaders had. Its what all good coaches do. He knew that the smartest way to coach a Sedin led team was the "discipline" system, because he knew they would be great at that. But I think that even AV would have cheered Daniel on if he'd punched back in that instance.  Not for Daniel's sake but for the rest of the team's sake looking on. I'm a lover not a fighter too. I probably would have been whining to the ref as well. But I expect different from a hockey player on my favourite team in such a high stakes game. I detest pointless "macho bravado", but in all honesty, that can be a rallying cry for a hockey team composed of players who, most of them at least, were brought up playing with that mind set. Whether I would do it personally in that situation or not, is n/a

As bad as the reffing was the Canucks averaged 8:07 PP time per game while the Bruins averaged 6:37 per game. The B's outscored the best PP in the league 5-2 in the series. PP opportunities were 33 to 27 in the Canucks favor. Average shots per game were 35.1 to 32.1 in the Canucks favor (186 to 152). Hits were 260 to 227 in Vancouver's favor. So the Canucks overall out hit them, out shot them and had more PP's in the series yet lost. I don't believe for a second Daniel fighting Marchand would have made a difference. The difference in the series was health and goaltending. Thomas was great for 7 games, setting an NHL record for saves in a final, while Luongo was great for 3. Would Luongo have been better with a healthier D in front of him? Would the Nucks have been better at scoring sans all the injuries to Henrik, Kesler, Samuelsson, Ehrhoff, Edler, and even Hanhuis? That's where I believe the series loss is, not one incident between Daniel and Marchand. I've maintained all along injuries and Thomas gave the Bruins win. With an honorable mention to Chara for the job he did on Henrik (even though it was often illegal). He was on Henrik like a bad stink through the series.

[MikeyD]

It's odd that I agree with everybody here haha. I think there were just too many factors going against Vancouver in that series and it clearly made a difference. 

[alt kilgore]

18 hours ago, Baggins said:

As bad as the reffing was the Canucks averaged 8:07 PP time per game while the Bruins averaged 6:37 per game. The B's outscored the best PP in the league 5-2 in the series. PP opportunities were 33 to 27 in the Canucks favor. Average shots per game were 35.1 to 32.1 in the Canucks favor (186 to 152). Hits were 260 to 227 in Vancouver's favor. So the Canucks overall out hit them, out shot them and had more PP's in the series yet lost. I don't believe for a second Daniel fighting Marchand would have made a difference. The difference in the series was health and goaltending. Thomas was great for 7 games, setting an NHL record for saves in a final, while Luongo was great for 3. Would Luongo have been better with a healthier D in front of him? Would the Nucks have been better at scoring sans all the injuries to Henrik, Kesler, Samuelsson, Ehrhoff, Edler, and even Hanhuis? That's where I believe the series loss is, not one incident between Daniel and Marchand. I've maintained all along injuries and Thomas gave the Bruins win. With an honorable mention to Chara for the job he did on Henrik (even though it was often illegal). He was on Henrik like a bad stink through the series.

Agree to disagree I guess. 

Of course those moments don't decide the whole series.  To win a sports championship, it takes a combination of talent of course, and good coaching with a system that players buy into. Those are controllable things outside of those spontaneous moments. But IMO it also includes how a team and its leaders react in those unscripted, unpredictable moments.  Look how Michael Jordan used anything he could, even made up, to fire up himself and his team mates. I'm not saying Daniel even could, its not his character, but if he DID recognize the importance of that moment and what he needed to force himself to do what was so out of character, as Linden did at times, and punched Marchand back in the face, I contend that would have not only shocked fans and team mates, it would have had an actual residual emotional lift for the Canucks in that series going forward.

 

Because we may have had a slight edge in PPs etc, but that doesn't say everything. The Bruins took advantage of experience in knowing the extent that they could get away with crap in the playoffs, and the amount of penalties does not tell you how many ACTUAL calls there should have been made. It probably should have been even more of a disparity in PPs. When one team plays the straight arrow way, and the other team plays like goons, you expect more calls to one team more. Its a tactic that Claude Julien employed.  I first saw this tactic when Anaheim won the Cup, in the series against us. Just keep pounding, hurting, and intimidating the other team, using the refs inherent tendency to even up calls, and soon the refs will just get tired of calling infractions, especially if its seen as tilting towards one team over the other.

 

Once a team employing this strategy is past this critical mass, they are laughing. A player like Marchand knows he can get away with speed punching a Sedin. It also doesn't help when a Canuck actually does goes over the line once, and hits a Bruin a half second late, and is handed the longest suspension in SCF history. The PPs failed partly because just before a call is made against them, the Bruins were probably running around physically intimidating and made two or three infractions that could have been called just before that.  We couldn't just switch to being our regular season dominant PP selves on a dime after 5 minutes of open season on us. The Bruins, Julien, slowly took over the series by recognizing how they could take advantage of our turn-the-other-cheek type strategy, and they also knew how to milk and use any of those "moments" that happened to them. 

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Edited June 1, 2020 by kilgore

[Baggins]

5 hours ago, kilgore said:

Agree to disagree I guess. 

Of course those moments don't decide the whole series.  To win a sports championship, it takes a combination of talent of course, and good coaching with a system that players buy into. Those are controllable things outside of those spontaneous moments. But IMO it also includes how a team and its leaders react in those unscripted, unpredictable moments.  Look how Michael Jordan used anything he could, even made up, to fire up himself and his team mates. I'm not saying Daniel even could, its not his character, but if he DID recognize the importance of that moment and what he needed to force himself to do what was so out of character, as Linden did at times, and punched Marchand back in the face, I contend that would have not only shocked fans and team mates, it would have had an actual residual emotional lift for the Canucks in that series going forward.

 

Because we may have had a slight edge in PPs etc, but that doesn't say everything. The Bruins took advantage of experience in knowing the extent that they could get away with crap in the playoffs, and the amount of penalties does not tell you how many ACTUAL calls there should have been made. It probably should have been even more of a disparity in PPs. When one team plays the straight arrow way, and the other team plays like goons, you expect more calls to one team more. Its a tactic that Claude Julien employed.  I first saw this tactic when Anaheim won the Cup, in the series against us. Just keep pounding, hurting, and intimidating the other team, using the refs inherent tendency to even up calls, and soon the refs will just get tired of calling infractions, especially if its seen as tilting towards one team over the other.

 

Once a team employing this strategy is past this critical mass, they are laughing. A player like Marchand knows he can get away with speed punching a Sedin. It also doesn't help when a Canuck actually does goes over the line once, and hits a Bruin a half second late, and is handed the longest suspension in SCF history. The PPs failed partly because just before a call is made against them, the Bruins were probably running around physically intimidating and made two or three infractions that could have been called just before that.  We couldn't just switch to being our regular season dominant PP selves on a dime after 5 minutes of open season on us. The Bruins, Julien, slowly took over the series by recognizing how they could take advantage of our turn-the-other-cheek type strategy, and they also knew how to milk and use any of those "moments" that happened to them. 

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There was plenty of push back from the Canucks, We also got away with a great deal. Most memorable for me was Henrik giving Chara a wicked two hander hack to his ankle while heading to the bench. This wasn't a little whack. Hank wound up like he was going to hit one out of the park. Thought for sure it would be called with a ref about 8 feet behind him and looked directly at them. No call. Both teams got away with crap. They called penalties, with the Nucks averaging 4 pp's per game, but let far, far too much go. And when your pp is 20.4% for the playoffs but only 6% in the finals you do have to give some credit to the other team. Thomas in particular.

 

Btw, Marchand knew he could get away with it because everybody else was tied up and Daniel doesn't fight. Plus if anybody comes at him after the fact his team gets a PP with the instigator. It was a golden opportunity for him and being a weasel he took it. He either took our top goal scorer off for five or gave his team a PP with an after the fact reaction. Win/win for the weasel.

 

Anyway, we'll just have to agree to disagree.