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Five Thoughts: Chicago’s heart of a champion giving Vancouver deja vu

Alain Vigneault

1. We were kidding around before about how Chicago’s Game 4 win would put some doubt into Vancouver’s mind. After all, Vancouver was heading back home with a chance to lock up the series in Game 5 and you can always shake off a bad loss. But after a brutal 5-0 loss in Game 5, Vancouver should be honestly worried because Chicago is playing like a focused and vengeful team. The kind of vengeance they’re enacting upon the Canucks is the harshest kind because they’re not doing it with their fists, they’re doing it by getting in their heads.

2. What turned this series around for Chicago? I hate to say it but Raffi Torres’ hit on Brent Seabrook seems to be the spark that got Chicago’s top players to snap out of their haze and start playing to their level. Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith weren’t exactly focused in the first three games of this series. Now they’re playing possessed hockey and Keith is as dangerous offensively as he is defensively. Now the series heads back to Chicago for Game 6 where the haunting refrain of Chelsea Dagger awaits the Canucks.

Momentum can be seized or continued with the next goal, but there’s no doubt that Vancouver is beyond frustrated and the Blackhawks have seen and dominated the Canucks when they’ve been in this mindset before.

3. While the Canucks are frustrated and some of their postgame quotes show that’s the case, good on Alain Vigneault for instantly committing to Roberto Luongo being the starter in Game 6. Avoiding the question of who would start the next game would’ve created a media circus debating who should start. Luongo’s been bad the last two games, but he’s their guy and they have to see it through. If he continues to fail and the Canucks should find a way to lose this series, Vigneault and GM Mike Gillis will have a lot to talk about in the offseason.

4. Tough to imagine that the Boston-Montreal series would see the road team winning all four games so far. What’s incredible about Boston’s Game 4 win is that it was a true redemption game all around for the Bruins. Down 3-1 early, they bounced back to tie the game and send it to overtime where they’d win it.

The guys making it happen were guys getting a lot of heat in Chris Kelly and Michael Ryder. Ryder in particular made coach Claude Julien’s seeming stubbornness in leaving him in the lineup pay off as he scored the Bruins’ first and last goals of the night while also adding an assist. Performances like that make fans forget that Tyler Seguin is parked in the press box.

5. The Kings teased their fans one more time in Game 4. After getting down 3-0 to San Jose, they scored twice in the second period and started to get control in the game just before the period ended. Turns out that intermission is all the Sharks needed to calm down and get focused again as they went on to roll in the third. With how that played out it’s just a sample of how this series has been for L.A. They would get close, even drag the Sharks into overtime, but they just weren’t good enough to pull it off.

That Game 3 collapse was a tremendous blow to this team, but unless they figure things out in a big way they’ll have to start thinking about the future. The Kings will be good and with Kopitar back and the Kings being in the mix in free agency, things are looking up in Hollywood even in the face of potential elimination. One area to figure out aside from forward depth might be defense. Guys not named Drew Doughty and Willie Mitchell have looked poor. Doughty is a restricted free agent after this year as is Alec Martinez, everyone else is locked up though. Time for Dean Lombardi to think about shopping around.