After dismantling the St Louis Blues in round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Canucks turned thier sights onto a very young, fast and skilled Chicago Blackhawks team. On paper the odds were in favor of the Canucks, and after winning game 1 on home ice, many Vancouver fans may have had the Western Conference finals in thier sights. But the young and resilant Blackhawks team never gave up, and we saw this numerous times throughout the six game series, with the Hawks having to come back from a deficit in all 6 games, including multiple 2 and 3 goal leads that the Canucks had at various points in the series.

With the Hawks winning this series in 6 games with game 6 having a stunning score of 7-5 for the home team, that game in a sense summed up the entire series in 60 minutes of hockey. The Canucks took too many penalties, their penalty kill was ineffective, the young snipers of the Hawks put the puck in the net, the Canucks defense seemed very slow and a step behind on every play, and Khabibulin outplayed Roberto Luongo. Not many people are overly surprised at all the the items at the top of the list, penalty kill, slow defence, etc..., but no one, including myself thought that Roberto Luongo would be the second best, by a fair margin, goaltender in this series.