Sports

You play with fire, you're going to get burned.

And that's exactly what happened to the Vancouver Canucks at the hands of the Calgary Flames on April 19 at General Motors Place. And now this Vancouver hockey team will have some serious scorch marks to deal with for an awfully long time. Simply put, the Canucks were the second-best team in what turned out to be an epic first-round series. But in the end, the correct team advanced, leaving the losers to figure out, yet again, exactly what went wrong.

Oh, sure, the Canucks can point to the scoreboard and say they merely came up a goal short in overtime in the seventh game of a series that could have gone either way. They could--and they might, but that would be a mistake.

Instead, they should take a long look at themselves and ask why they were unable to dictate the play for longer than a period in any game against the Flames. The Canucks were supposed to be the more skilled team in this series. They were supposed to have a decided edge in speed. They were the team with home-ice advantage. (Although they lost three straight, six of their last seven playoff games at the Garage, and an astounding 18 of their last 24 postseason contests on home ice dating back to 1995, should put a pretty quick end to an argument about any advantage this franchise has at home.)

As it turned out, the Canucks were the team that got outworked, outhustled, outmuscled, and ultimately ousted from the playoffs by a blue-collar bunch who appeared to want the win just that much more. And considering that the same thing happened to the same group a year ago, this loss and the early start to summer that comes with it can only be seen as a failure.

The Canucks are now an appalling 1-4 in playoff series under the leadership of Brian Burke and Marc Crawford and with Markus Naslund as captain.

"Well, it's a disappointment, obviously," a dejected Naslund told the media in the dressing room after Monday's loss. "It's a real bad feeling, that's for sure. This team has gone through quite a bit this year, and to end it this way is very unfortunate."

Unfortunate just isn't the right word; crushing is more like it.

And Naslund was a large part of the problem in this series. He was badly outplayed by the captain and star on the other side. Jarome Iginla was a force, and never better than his two-goal-and-one-assist performance in the series finale. Naslund, who played hard in brief spurts and still managed to lead the team with nine points (but only two goals) in the series, was never the dominant player he has been for the past few regular seasons.

He appeared to be playing hurt, although he refused to admit it. But throughout the series he shied away from contact and appeared unable to shoot the puck with the same power and precision that has made him one of the game's great marksmen.

And Naslund had plenty of company in the "had to be better department" throughout the series: Trevor Linden, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Geoff Sanderson, and Martin Rucinsky, just to name a few. Mattias Ohlund drew the unenviable (and impossible, as it turned out) assignment of stopping Iginla, who wound up with five goals and eight points. Ohlund put up a valiant fight early in the series, but it appeared that all the banging and crashing and having his face rubbed into the glass time and time again started to take its toll by the time the series became a best-of-three.

"Calgary played hard, but you would think we could find a way to play better," Ohlund said. "Everybody wanted to win, but for some reason they did a better job of getting in front of our net and battling for their rebounds, and as defence we should have done a better job of clearing the pucks away. And on our offence, they did a better job of boxing guys out and making sure we couldn't score off rebounds."

Again, it came down to paying a price, a price the Flames were willing to pay while too many Canucks preferred the comfort of the perimeter. They talked constantly about the need to get traffic to the front of the Calgary net but rarely made good on their promise to go there.

The Canucks were outcoached at times, although Crawford would never admit it. But how else do you explain how Darryl Sutter was able to get every last bit of effort from his guys while Crawford couldn't get his team going?

"I don't think it was anything that we were lacking. We had it, just a couple of players didn't find it," Crawford said, referring to the ability of certain players to produce when most needed. "We showed a lot of grit, we showed a lot of character, and we came back [in Game 7 and in the series]. Sometimes it's cruel lessons like this that help you learn how to win, and I'm sure they're a sore group in the Calgary room, but that pain goes away. But the pain of learning doesn't go away for us."

The Canucks played in this series as they had on so many nights throughout their up-and-down regular season. They fell behind in five of the games, then spent much of their time trying to rally, saving their best and most desperate hockey for their constant comeback attempts.

They used that strategy again on Monday night, but in the end they were unable to pull this one out.

And so it's Calgary that skates into the second round of the playoffs while the Canucks watched their hopes of a Stanley Cup die.

Jeff Paterson hosts Sportstalk Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays, 9 p.m. to midnight, on CKNW.