Often a scapegoat, Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo played well but was victimized by his teammates' desultory effort in the Game 1 loss to the keep-it-simple Kings. (Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images)

In the dressing room at our regular Tuesday night skate, the guys were talking about the playoffs and which teams might do what, and it seemed to me that a case could be made for each of the 16 clubs winning their opening round series. That’s how even things looked going into the tournament. Judging from the first seven games, it sure does look that even, with five of the seven being one-goal decisions, another a de facto one-goal game with an empty-netter. Four of the seven went to overtime.

It’s ridiculously early to be thinking about this but, just as a point of reference, the record for most one-goal Stanley Cup playoff games in year was set in 2007, when 51 of 81 games were decided by a single goal. That’s followed by the 48 one-goal games out of 89 games last spring, the 46 out of 86 in 2001 and the 46 out of 83 in 2006.

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If fan whipping boy Roberto Luongo plays poorly against the offensively-challenged Kings, calls for backup netminder Cory Schneider will ring from the rafters in Vancouver. (Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images)

If you’re looking for Stanley Cup predictions, you’ve come to the wrong place. As we’ve previously written, predictions are a waste of time. However, we’re willing to take some stabs at what is each playoff team about. What do they have to do to win? What must they avoid to prevent things from going south?

So here are the keys to the first round match-ups in the Western Conference.  You can find the Eastern Conference here.

VANCOUVER CANUCKS (1) vs. LOS ANGELES KINGS (8)

Canucks – Who they are and how they win: They shook off a late season malaise to finish 8-1-1 in their last 10 — much of the time without Daniel Sedin – while playing dominant hockey down the stretch and capturing the Presidents’ Trophy. A superskilled team with a some bite, Vancouver has the best offense in the conference and, potentially, a strong power play. The Canucks have  refined their roster this season a bit, adding depth with a solid offensive performer in David Booth, a proven shutdown center in Sami Pahlsson, and some menace in Zack Kassian. The defense corps excels at moving the puck forward, and the only question in goal is which guy, Roberto Luongo or Cory Schneider, will finish the series.

What could go wrong: If Luongo plays poorly, Schneider remains an unknown when it comes to carrying a team in the playoffs. The power play struggled in the second half and if Daniel Sedin’s concussion symptoms keep him sidelined for an extended period (he was ruled out for Game 1), that probably won’t help its improvement.  Even if Sedin returns, the Canucks, who haven’t always gotten secondary scoring,  will need it if the defensively proficient Kings can shut down their top line. And superior physicality could allow the Kings to win more battles along the boards, in the corners and in the slot. L.A.’s stiffling defense has the potential to frustrate the Canucks into taking penalties. If things go wrong and the Vancouver fan base turns on the team, that could be a significant negative. And Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick is good enough to steal this series.

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It's possible that the Predators' impeccable Pekka Rinne may be wearing down from his heavy workload. (Scott Kane/Icon SMI)

It’s the oldest adage in the game: You win in the playoffs with great goaltending. But sometimes you win with only good or just average goaltending (as we pointed out a year ago when we looked at how the postseason clubs were fixed at the position on the eve of the annual tournament), but no one can deny how much Tim Thomas meant to the Bruins in their march to the Stanley Cup last season. His winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP marked the 15th time that a goalie has been so honored since the trophy was first presented in 1965.

Suffice to say, it’s hard to go anywhere in the spring if you have a leaky guy standing — or falling — in the crease, so with the playoffs only nine days away, here’s how the each Western Conference clubs goaltending shapes up. Click here for our Eastern breakdown.

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Roberto Luongo's lousy play has Canucks fans and media calling for him to take a seat on the pine. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

It’s a difficult task to repeat as a champion in the NHL. No Stanley Cup winner has done it since the Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. But it’s also tough just to reach the Cup final in consecutive years. Only five clubs have managed that since 1988 which, if my math is correct — always a tricky proposition — means that almost 90 percent of the time, teams don’t get a return trip to the fourth round.

The way Canucks are playing right now, they look like they’ll be hanging with that 90 percent.

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Goalies can be like Mama Gump's box of chocolates -- you never know what you're gonna get -- and that's been very true for the St. Louis Blues with Brian Elliott (left) this season. (Minas Panagiotakis/Icon SMI)

The news from St. Louis that the Blues have rewarded Brian Elliott with a two-year contract extension sparked a few thoughts about goaltending in general and the Blues in particular.

There is no official NHL award for comeback player of the year, and even if there was, Elliott might not actually be a good choice because his earlier incarnation as a goalie for the Ottawa Senators produced only one good season (29-18-4, 2.57 goals-againt average and .909 save percentage with five shutouts in 2009-10) and a few not so good ones. But his work so far this season (15-5-1, 1.68 and .937) has him swimming with the big fish of NHL netminders, namely The Bruins’ Tim Thomas, the Predators’ Pekka Rinne and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist. (SI.com’s Michael Farber looked at Elliott’s emergence in a recent column.)

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Young winger James Neal (18) has kept the Crosby-less, Malkin-less Penguins afloat with his six goals.(Dean Beattie/ZUMAPRESS..com)

My Tuesday nights don’t vary much. Our group assembles at an old prep school barn of a rink and airs it out as best we can. We’ve got an exceptional early evening time slot, which most recreational skaters know is a real luxury. So for one night, watching NHL action gets relegated to Priority Two.  Not that we don’t talk about the NHL while we’re dressing for the skate.

Detroit Gary and Jay converse reverently about the Red Wings. The Rangers fans, like Crack, Lacey, Dr. Dave, Cohen, Toddzilla, Eric and Matty long ago stopped trying to convince everyone — and each other — that their team could be real a Stanley Cup contender. Berube gets ragged on because every time he buys a Flyers jersey, the player whose name is on the back gets traded (Eric jokingly brought in an old Jaromir Jagr Rangers jersey for Berube to wear this week, knowing full well that Berube would never put on a Rangers sweater). And the Bruins fans like Frankie, McFall, Lee, Brian and James (not to mention Phil, whenever he’s back from Abu Dhabi) still can’t quite believe that their team actually won the Stanley Cup last season.

After the skate comes the inevitable question. “You goin’ down?” by which the guy who is asking wants to know from the guy being asked if he’s driving to the local grille for a late dinner and to watch what he can of the NHL – often the third period of an Eastern time zone game featuring one of the New York teams, or whatever game Versus is showing. It’s either that or beer in the parking lot.

I always end up at the Grille and I’m always the last guy there, so the later the TV game starts, the more I can catch. Some nights, I have to be content with only seeing highlights before heading home and watching a game I’ve recorded or something on Game Center Live. But last night, with an early Versus game and a Rangers game in Vancouver, in addition to lots of highlights, there was plenty to chew over with my turkey sandwich, sweet potato fries and club soda.
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Who are those men in blue? Defenseman Keith Ballard is one of the few recognizable names that has been appearing in preseason games for the Canucks this year. (Anne-Marie Sorvin-US PRESSWIRE)

With repeat runs to championship series or games in team sports increasingly unlikely these days, the Vancouver Canucks are trying to increase their chances by managing their roster a bit differently. It’s a long, long year for any NHL club, and even longer for a team that goes deep in the playoffs, so the Canucks know they’re going to need all sorts of luck, breaks, good health and other intangibles aside from consistently superior performances.

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Given the rugged nature of the position, a defenseman hasn't won the Lady Byng Trophy (gentlemanly play) since 1954, but Nicklas Lidstrom of the Red Wings truly deserves it. (Robin Alam/Icon SMI)

The NHL hands out its regular season awards on Wednesday evening in Las Vegas, a venue that just oozes hockey history and tradition. Actually, the “nominees-winner” Academy Awards-style format is as artificial as Vegas glitz because the “nominees” are not nominees at all but actually the top three vote-getters from the April balloting (here’s who SI.com’s Michael Farber chose) after the votes are tabulated. So the winner has already been determined when the nominees are announced. This format transforms the known into the suspenseful, so maybe Vegas is the right venue after all.
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A matter of mind: Keep an eye on goaltender Roberto Luongo and how he and the Canucks react if the Bruins score a goal, especially if they light the lamp early in the game. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

It’s Game 7 tonight, one last contest for the silver bowl named for Fredrick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, the 16th Earl of Derby KG, GCB, GCVO, PC. Yes, that was his official title when, as Governor-General of Canada, he donated the trophy as a challenge cup for the country’s top amateur hockey team in 1882. The Stanley Cup is now the most famous and storied trophy competed for by professional athletes in North America. Players on both the Bruins and Canucks, regardless of their country of origin, have played their entire lives for a chance to have their name engraved on it.

That includes Tim Thomas, the Bruins goaltender from the hard-bitten industrial town of Flint, Michigan, who has distinguished himself above all others this spring. “When we’re in the garage or driveway playing as a kid and you’re fantasizing,” Thomas said on Tuesday, “well, I was Stevie Yzerman, which doesn’t make sense for a goalie, but you’re saying to yourself, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, you’re not saying Game 6, you know? So this is really, you know, what every kid dreams about.”

Dreams are important and no one achieves greatness without them. But it will be transforming those dreams into desire and then execution that will likely carry the evening in Vancouver. The team that plays better and tries harder should be the one that skates with the Cup. Of course, as we’ve seen all spring, anything can happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and we fully expect one final bizarre chapter will be written in the story of this year’s very bizarre tournament.
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In a series full of enigmas, the biggest has been Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo, who unwisely gave the Bruins plenty of emotional ammo before Game 6 and then inexplicably turned into a sieve. (Reuters)

So we’ll go to a seventh game in the Stanley Cup Final after Boston beat Vancouver 5-2 on Monday, and the only thing one can say for certain is that the last game of the season will be on Wednesday.

There’s no way to fully understand what has gone on in this series, one in which the home team always scores first and wins, the Canucks look like deserving champs at home and big-time chumps on the road, the Bruins sometimes throw the puck away like yesterday’s trash, sometimes more concerned with physical provocation (to which the Canucks don’t respond on the road) and seemingly more intent on hitting to injure than hitting to separate an opponent from the puck.

We want the Stanley Cup Final to be the best hockey of the year. This isn’t. It has been great theater, but the quality of play hasn’t equaled the drama. Neither of these teams nor their fans care, of course. They don’t award the Stanley Cup based on style points.
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