Man, I love/hate the playoffs.

I love the playoffs because nothing, absolutely nothing, matches the excitement of watching live sports. The only thing that I think comes close is the atmosphere that comes with the World Cup. World Series? Yawn. Super Bowl? No thanks. I’ll stick with the Stanley Cup playoffs, thanks.

Not sure what brought this all about, but this is a rather disgusting display of team pride being exhibited, according to the uploader, by Kings fans post Game 3. I hate seeing stuff like this happen at sporting events.

I know emotions are running high for this series and that some fans are upset with how things are planning out. Heck, I was right there last night. Just remember there’s never a good reason to beat someone up over a hockey game. Game 5 is on Friday, hopefully there won’t be a repeat at GM Place of that Ducks/Canucks fan incident.

There are three things which the Canucks should be looking at, all of which are of varying importance and had an impact on tonight’s loss.

The first, clearly, obviously, is the penalty kill. Allowing three straight goals on essentially the same plays is problematic, regardless of this the preseason, regular season or postseason. More worrying is the fact that the bulk of these goals came with the Canucks top penalty killing unit out on the ice. People can start pining for Ryan Johnson all they want, but the problems transcend any sort of contribution he could be making on the penalty kill. Kesler and Burrows are supposedly the Canucks best guys on the penalty kill and they were on the ice for 2 goals against, Burrows was on for 3.

What an ugly finish. And I’m not talking about Kopitar’s grinning mug as he scored his very first powerplay goal. Fans serenading the on-ice officials as the Canucks lost in OT tonight wasn’t exactly what I was wanting in Game 2, nor was I looking for another instance of Kevin Bieksa getting sliced up by a skate blade or the Canucks taking a bench minor.

But it all happened, unfortunately. And as nice as it would be to blame the referees for the loss, as great as it would be to point to officiating as the reason why the Canucks were ’screwed’, you can’t really pin that on anyone but the Canucks themselves.

They’re almost here. The Canucks playoffs, that is.

With only a few hours to go until puck drop, I thought I’d do a quick preview of tonight’s series. Read on if you aren’t completely sick of the analysis, prognosticating and predictions that have infested anything NHL-related!

The Canucks are meeting the LA Kings in the first round of the NHL playoffs. Since we’re going to be seeing a lot of LA, I figure I’d go and take the time to provide a primer for Canucks fans who may not be 100% up to date on the Kings. Think of this comprehensive, all-inclusive guide as your ‘cheat sheet’ to the Los Angeles Kings.

So Roberto Luongo has been getting it from all angles as of late and Saturday’s game against the Sharks, an affair where he gave up 3 goals in a losing effort has ratcheted up the criticism. (Sidenote: I apologize for the lack of a Postscript for the San Jose game, I came down with something and was incapacitated for Saturday night/Sunday. Oops.) While I wasn’t a fan of the Marleau goal (which came after a smart play from Rob Blake, forcing Alex Edler to turn over the puck) and thought he ‘ran out of mulligans’ against the Oilers, I do think some of the criticism is being a little over the top.
Take, for example, Dave Hodge’s feature on TSN during the Edmonton game. Sold as looking for reasons as to why the Canucks won’t win the Cup this season, it quickly morphed into Hodge running Luongo down, claiming he is the reason why Vancouver won’t win the Cup. On Sunday during TSN’s The Reporters, Hodge brought up Luongo again with most of the guests taking their turn at bashing him. I understand there’ll always be differing opinions in the world of sport, you sort of have to wonder about the motivations of folks like Damien Cox, whose criticism of Luongo you have to take with a grain of salt.

Normally if a goalie makes 50 stops, you’d figure that they won the game after putting up such an impressive performance.

Not the case tonight for Roberto Luongo, who may felt like he was back in Florida playing for the Panthers. It was in Florida, you’ll recall, that Luongo set a dubious record for most shots faced in a single NHL season. The fact that the Canucks defense was having, and this is putting it charitably, an off-night must’ve had him thinking he had fallen asleep in a hot tub and gone back in time.

Yeah, I’m skipping the Islanders game. Don’t worry, I have a blog post forthcoming on that game! Chronological order? What’s that?

I know, I’m late. Furthermore, I’m like two weeks behind with the Week That Was. Unfortunately, paid work trumps unpaid work.

I’m going to do a 2 in 1, sort of, for this, considering I missed blogging the Sens game as well. (That sound you hear? Google Analytics dying of crib death…) I thought this was probably one of the best games, top to bottom, from the Canucks in a long time. Kevin Bieksa looked good coming back in his first game since his calf was sliced and diced, Luongo was in fine form and just about everyone was doing their job. Even guys like Ryan Johnson.