All things considered, the Vancouver Canucks have every right to feel pretty good about where they stand at the midway mark of their 2008–09 season. They may not have felt so good when they reached the halfway point on January 4, given the fact that they squandered a 2–0 lead on home ice and wound up on the wrong end of a 3–2 shootout against the Dallas Stars. But with 21 victories and 47 points through their first 41 games, the Canucks managed to persevere through injuries and inconsistency to more than hold their own in the National Hockey League’s Western Conference playoff chase.

So what’s their reward for a reasonably strong first half under some trying circumstances? Very little, really. They get to line up and slug it out over the final 41 games, hoping to erase the memories of last season’s second-half collapse that left them on the outside looking in when the quest for the Stanley Cup began. Last year’s team actually had three more points at the midpoint of the season than this year’s group did and still couldn’t qualify for the playoffs. So the Canucks can’t take anything for granted.

Credit this year’s Canucks for finding ways to win hockey games without Roberto Luongo, Kevin Bieksa, Sami Salo, Pavol Demitra, and Ryan Johnson for long stretches of the first half of the season. Credit them, as well, for finding ways to win with every forward on the team other than Kyle Wellwood going through a prolonged scoring drought at some point over the first three months of the schedule. And credit the Canucks for overcoming a tough schedule that saw them play 19 of their first 30 games on the road.

Now, with Luongo’s return from the significant groin injury he suffered on November 22 on the horizon, and newly signed Mats Sundin here and expected to be a key contributor, the Canucks appear well positioned for the second half of the season.

With Luongo healthy and in the lineup, the Canucks started the season with 13 wins and three shootout losses in their first 21 games. In the 20 games that followed, with Luongo on the shelf and the team scrambling to find some semblance of stability in net, the Canucks wobbled to a record of 8-9-3 (with some welcome help from newly signed netminder Jason LaBarbera). So the importance of Luongo to the Canucks can’t be overstated. But no one knows when he’ll be cleared to return, and no one can know how much time he’ll need to regain the form he displayed in November, when he posted three consecutive shutouts and guided the Canucks to a run of eight wins in 10 games.

And how long will it take the almost 38-year-old Sundin to find his legs and adapt to life in the Western Conference, after spending his entire career in the east? Sure, he’s been a great player in years gone by, but it’s probably foolish to expect him to dominate hockey games any time soon. Who will he play with, and how will he mesh with his linemates? Although they’re excited to have Sundin, the Canucks have to realize this really will be an experiment in the early going.

And even with Sundin added to the mix, the Canucks still appear to be one proven goal scorer short of two dangerous scoring lines. Because no matter who plays on which lines, the way the Canucks stack up right now, Mason Raymond or Steve Bernier gets slotted into a spot among the team’s top six forwards. Neither has shown enough on an ongoing basis this season to legitimately be considered a regular goal-scoring threat.

The hope is certainly that Sundin will make the guys he plays with better, and that’s probably a fair assumption to make. But it still seems likely that the Canucks will need to pull the trigger on a trade to upgrade their forward group if they truly believe they have a shot at a lengthy playoff run this spring.

Although they managed to split their four games this season with the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, the Canucks have been shredded by the San Jose Sharks, and they haven’t fared well against other top teams like Chicago, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia.

With the second half of the season under way, the Canucks have to start framing some of their projections in playoff terms and asking themselves if they think they can beat the Wings, Sharks, or Hawks four times out of seven. Right now, that seems difficult to imagine. Then again, the Canucks haven’t had their two highest-paid players in the lineup together for a single game yet, so they should be given every opportunity to make an impact.

The Canucks don’t have to worry about winning the Stanley Cup next week or even next month, which means they certainly have the benefit of time on their side. But they’ll have to be better than they’ve been lately, with just two victories in their first six games since Christmas. Otherwise, they may need to lean on Sundin and Luongo just to scramble into the playoffs, rather than hitting their stride so that they’re one of those teams that the other teams don’t want to face once the postseason rolls around.

They looked like that early in the season—and the second half of the schedule is about to prove whether the Canucks can get their game back to that level.

Jeff Paterson is a sportscaster and talk-show host on Vancouver’s all-sports radio, Team 1040. E-mail him at jeff.paterson@team1040.ca.