First Game Easy. The Rest? Don’t Count On It.

Well, the Canucks certainly made that look easy, eh?  It’s too bad the rest of the series won’t be that simple.  Roberto Luongo didn’t have a spectacular game, but then, he didn’t need to.  Jumping out to a 5-0 lead certainly helps a team play with a lot more confidence.  Doesn’t hurt that the Hawks had to take a fair number of chances that they wouldn’t under normal circumstances either.

A few days ago, a Hawks blogger roundtable was held on BlackhawkUp, in which this response was posted to the question, “Looking ahead, what’s the most important factor or player in this series against the Canucks?”  A: “The main factor for the Blackhawks is to shut down the rest of Vancouver’s role players — Samuelsson, Kessler, Demitra, Burrows, et al — from making too big of an impact on this series. Samuelsson scored 11 points against Los Angeles and was a huge factor in the Canucks surviving that series. I’m more concerned with keeping their third and fourth line off the score sheet than worrying about what we already know will be difficult to contend with.”

So what happened last night?  Let’s review.  Henrik Sedin with one goal, and Daniel Sedin with one assist.  The rest of the scoring came from Mason Raymond, Kyle Wellwood, and Michael Grabner.  What was that about keeping the third and fourth lines off the score sheet?

And Dustin Byfuglien can just keep on playing just the way he did last night for the rest of the series.  Invisible works good for him.

Antti Niemi got pulled from the third period, with Cristobal Huet playing the rest of the game.  Seeing as how Joel Quennville is known for juggling lines at the drop of a hat, it’ll be interesting to see if he goes back to Huet, a guy who barely played in the last month of the regular season after losing his confidence.

The Canucks came out with a lot more jump than the Hawks, and I’m wondering if those predicting the Hawks in 5 are re-thinking their position.  If not, they certainly should be. 

Is it time to start thinking about the Canucks sweeping this series?  No, it’s not, because it ain’t gonna happen.  The Hawks are too good a team to suck as badly as they did last night for four straight games.  But if the Canucks could get out of Chicago with a 2-0 series lead, can you imagine GM Place on Wednesday night?