VANCOUVER — It was Henrik Sedin who said on Wednesday, “It’s true, Corsi doesn’t win you games.”
He was addressing the glass-half-full mindset maintained by the Canucks through the first four games of their series against the Calgary Flames, where the Sedins in particular were winning the fancy stats battle, but Vancouver was behind in the series three games to one.
According to the geeks, if you win the fancy stats you will win the games, eventually. But the nonbelievers say, when your nameplate reads SEDIN, if the red light doesn’t start going on, who cares about anything else?
On Thursday both things happened, as Daniel scored the third period winner in a 2-1 game that the Canucks dominated in every facet — particularly in puck possession.
“Maybe by doing it over and over again, it might pay off in the end,” Daniel said of Vancouver’s possession game. “I don’t think we did anything different — we shot the puck (more) — but I don’t know if we were digging deeper, or they were a bit tired. Might be a combination of both.”
Maybe. Or perhaps Henrik was wrong. Maybe Corsi can win you a game, eventually, if you dominate the possession stats the way the Sedins have over the Flames’ top line for five games.
“I hope so,” Daniel said. “In a long series, if you can make them tired, it’s going to pay off. All you can do is create chances, and sooner or later they’re going to start to go in. That’s the way we look at it, and tonight it paid off.”
We’ve reached that point now, folks. It’s a long series, guaranteed for six games, with a genuine possibility of seven.
Calgary is quicker and heavier up front, and their game plan of pounding, pounding, pounding on the Canucks defencemen is surely paying off. Alex Edler is not the Canucks’ best defenceman, which is a battle won for the Flames. He, Luca Sbisa and Kevin Bieksa have been turning pucks over in the face of the Michael Ferland-led Calgary forecheck with growing regularity.
Vancouver’s plan is more IKEA. Possess, possess, possess. Recalling that the Flames have succeeded all season in the face of the Corsi numbers, we are left to ask: Was Game 5 a product of erosion? Did four games of pretty good possession for Vancouver produce a Game 5 that they truly dominated?
Or, was that a one-off by a desperate team on the brink of elimination? Will Calgary’s way beat the Canucks way when we get back to Calgary for a Saturday night Game 6?
Has the series truly shifted? Or was Thursday merely a death throe for Vancouver?
“I don’t know if we did everything right in Games 3 and 4,” cautioned Kevin Bieksa. “I think we’re pretty honest with ourselves, when we realized that maybe we played good enough to win, but that’s not good enough in playoffs. You don’t want to leave that margin of error. You want to play good enough that you win the game, regardless of bounces or calls against.
“Tonight, we weren’t going to let even a couple of penalties late in the game keep this game away from us.”
Calgary has made a season out of efforts like this, but they usually ended up going their way. In reality, Game 5 was a 2-1 Canucks win that could have been 4-1 or 5-2. Jonas Hiller was fantastic. The shots favoured Vancouver 34-16. Complete domination, yet only 2-1.
“We’ve got to get more shots in tight and get a bit greasier in and around there,” said Calgary’s Mikael Backlund. “More traffic on Miller. He’s a good goalie but we didn’t shoot enough. I know we won the last game not shooting much, but to win tight games you need to shoot over 30 shots.”
So, we go back to the foothills, where the Flames have already put out the call to their fans to clean up their act on The Red Mile, where the whole “Show Your Cans for Monahan” thing is making the girls skittish.
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Flames Nation will start pouring for Game 6 early Saturday afternoon, and the crowd on Saturday will be drunk, disorderly, and fixing for a series clincher.
Along those lines, if only we could find someone to guarantee the win. To throw a little heat on the home side, with their grasp on the series loosened just a tad.
“There is no way we’re losing at home,” promised Backlund.
No way? Awesome!
See you in Calgary.
