On the eve of round two
Posted April 30, 2010 12:02 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CHICAGO (NEWS1130) – Get ready for one heck of a series! The Vancouver Canucks are in Chicago, ahead of their 2nd round playoff series against the Blackhawks and our own Ann Schmaltz is there.
When these two teams met last year, the Hawks forwards ran at Roberto Luongo relentlessly… but Ann has anything changed?
“It will be quite the crease battle between Luongo and Chicago’s Dustin Byfuglien. It’s his job to get in the captain’s way and his head. Byfuglien is pretty good at it. Last season there was a mini-brawl with a couple of fights – one that included Alex Burrows pulling the hair out of Chicago’s Duncan Keith.”
“But Roberto is ready and he’s said all week long that he just has to deal with it, stay sharp, fight through it, find the puck and make the saves. “
She adds the Canucks will have to also be more consisten on special teams if they’re going to beat the Hawks.
“The team dodged a bullet in the first round against L.A. when they lost the special teams battle to the Kings but they still managed to win the series. They know that is unlikely to happen against the Hawks. Daniel Sedin has been saying all week that they know they can’t win this one if the penalty kill is where it was during the round one series and he feels the powerplay was decent but it still can be better.”
“The Canucks ranked dead last on the PK of the 16 teams in the first round while the Blackhawks had tremendous success with their penalty kill in their first round with Nashville. They killed off all but one of the Predators 27 extra man advantages.”
Game One goes Saturday at 5pm and you can depend on News1130 for everything.
We have Canucks Scoreboards every ten minutes on the five for the duration of the post-season, plus on-air breaking news alerts every time a goal is scored, and Ann will give us game updates at the end of every period.
