Vancouver Canucks: The1994 team’s road to success (Part 1)
Vancouver Canucks wasn’t able to come up with the expected performance during the 1993-94 regular season after the high standards that they had set for themselves.
Canucks was expected to score even more points this time as they had previously piled up a total of 96 and 101 points over the past two regular seasons. There were several chances for Canucks to pile up an even better season this time but they were not successful
in doing so.
All they could do was reflect on where they went wrong as they scored 85 points in the season.
The thing that bothered them the most was that they were in a Pacific Division in 1994, that was said to be quite weak at the time and they were still unable to come up with a strong performance.
At the end of the regular season, the performance led to many senior analysts saying that Canucks won’t survive for long in the play-offs.
Some predictions led towards Canucks being knocked out in the first round while some said that they would make it no further than the second round.
The first round of the series witnessed Canucks up against Calgary Flames.
The first game of the series was played at Flames’ home ice. Many expected that Flames would notch up the win but this didn’t happen as with the strong offence and defence that they had at the time, Canucks successfully scored goals and won the game 5-0,
to shock everyone.
The second game of the series was a high scoring game that resulted in Flames coming up with a 7-5 win after their star forward, Gary Roberts, was on target twice.
The next two games in the series were pretty much even with regard to offence and defence, comparing the two teams. The differentiating factor between the two sides was most definitely the goalkeeping department.
Flames received immense support from their goalkeeper, Mike Vernon, who transformed himself into the best goalkeepers at the time.
Canucks was left trailing 3-1 in the series and if they wanted to win the series and make their way in to the second round, they needed to put in a serious effort.
The morale was down but Canucks were determined to fight back and hoped that they could make their way back into the series.
The fifth game of the series was very close and the scores were on level terms at 1-1 at the end of the regulation time.
The game went into overtime where the star goalkeeper of Flames continued to make some spectacular saves.
However, Geoff Courtnall scored a brilliant goal to win the game for Canucks and trail 3-2 in the series which was said to be close with the win.
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