Vancouver Canucks needs Ryan Kesler to continue on what he has been doing so far - NHL
Vancouver Canucks had to wait a very long time for this to happen, to come close to the Stanley Cup. This is the second time that Vancouver Canucks has made it into the Conference Finals after 1994 when it went on to lose the Stanley Cup Finals.
Many Canucks’ ex-players relate the performance of Ryan Kesler with that of Pavel Bure.
Kesler is among the players that have the capability of carrying the team on their shoulders. Kesler has been superb during the course of the season and is considered to be the favourite to win the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Canucks’ coach, Alain Vigneault, said that Kesler’s performance can be compared to goalkeeper, Roberto Luongo’s, performance in 2007.
He was brilliant during the course of the postseason during which he won five games and lost seven. The stats that he piled up were 1.77 goals against average and 0.941 saves percentages.
"Even though we lost against Anaheim, in our second round, it was all Roberto", Vigneault recalled on Tuesday afternoon. "I remember at that time there were a few jokes of our team – in our team picture, there was nobody on the bench and Roberto at one end".
Kesler has been very dominating during the course of the playoffs as he leads the playoffs with most points, 15, and is second in the list for most assists, while scoring a total of five goals out of the 13 games that he has played so far during the playoffs.
"Obviously he did play real well, he was driving our bus", Vigneault said. "He took charge both offensively and defensively and played real strong. We need him to continue".
Kesler came up with a decent performance against Hawks in the first round of the playoffs as he did a very good job stopping Hawks’ centre, Jonathan Toews.
He played a major part in Canucks’ win as he restricted this talented player to only a single goal and four assists during the course of the series.
Although he was struggling in the series against Nashville Predators, after the first two games Kesler put the foot on the gas.
With the passage of time things got better for him and he scored five goals in the last four games that played an important role as Canucks won the series by 4-2 to advance into the Conference Finals.
"To be honest, I didn't change my game that much", said Kesler of the point differential in the two series. "I was still getting good looks in the Chicago series, it just wasn't going in”.
Kesler definitely needs to perform in the upcoming games but if Canucks is looking to win the Stanley Cup then it needs other players to follow the lines of Kesler as well.
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