Canucks: Can They Keep It Up?

With Jeff Cowan as leading scorer in the last three games, the Vancouver Canucks look more and more like the real package. Comparing the way they contained and eventually wore down and beat the Tampa Bay Lightning to nights ago, vs. the way the Lightning did the same to Edmonton last night, one can only conclude that the standings are not lying. No more is this the Canuck team of the "West Coast Express" which if you could contain that one line you could beat the team.

Each of the top three lines can and will score, so an opponent can not concentrate their best checking line against only one of the three. Although some power play goals have gone in against the Canucks recently, the penalty kill continues to be at the top of the league.

Brent Sopel and Bryan Smolinsky, the pre-deadline acquisitions are contributing and I hear the young Sopels are already going to Vancouver schools once more, glad to be back. The division leader with the lowest point total may be just under the radar and I begin to expect that the Canucks will surprise opponents all the way to the conference final. Will it be enough to go through to the final? A cup would go a long way to expunging the disapointment under King Richard in the 1982, or the game seven defeat against the Rangers in 1994.