The Stanley Cup is in the building tonight at Bridgestone Arena, and the Nashville Predators had better do everything in their power to keep on fighting.
The home team has won every game in this series so far, paralleling the Vancouver Canucks' experience in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final—until Game 7, of course. As Nashville surged back into the series in Games 3 and 4, I thought this Final might be following a similar pattern. My opinion has now shifted, mostly because Sidney Crosby has raised his battle level and shown that he's going to do whatever it takes to win. That's the hunger that deserted the Canucks in the late stages of their series against Boston, even in the 1-0 home win that got them within a game of the title.
I don't double that the Preds will come out strong again on home ice tonight, but it sure sounds like defenseman Ryan Ellis won't be in the lineup—and that's a really big deal. Nashville was able to plug the gaping hole that was left by Ryan Johansen's scary thigh injury, but for all the talk of the Preds tremendous blue line, Pittsburgh has been doing an excellent job of exploiting that third pairing of Yannick Weber and Matt Irwin.
Nashville coach Peter Laviolette will get the opportunities to dictate the matchups tonight on home ice, but his job will be a while lot tougher if he can't lean on Ellis.
I like the Penguins and the Predators, so I'm not terribly partisan about which team ultimately takes home the Cup. But I'm rooting for the underdogs tonight—to deliver another show-stopping memory for their fans and to force Game 7. This has been a fun, wildly unpredictable series and I don't want it to end!
Earlier this week, I wrote a piece for Bleacher Report about how a Stanley Cup win would affect the legacies of the top players on both teams.
Click here if you'd like to take a look.
And for a reminder of how hard it is to get another chance to win the Stanley Cup after the opportunity slips through your fingers, you can peruse this Jeff Paterson piece.
Not only have the Canucks as a team played only three playoff series in six years and won just three postseason games since 2011, not one player who skated in Game 7 of that 2011 Final has made it back to the Stanley Cup Final with any team in six subsequent seasons—sorry, Ryan Kesler.
The only members of the organization who have reached the Final were the team's two top coaches—Alain Vigneault with the New York Rangers in 2013-14 and Rick Bowness with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2014-15. They didn't win then, either.
The Preds have one player on their team who can speak directly to this truth. Captain Mike Fisher was a 27-year-old two-way centre in the prime of his career when the Ottawa Senators lost the Stanley Cup Final in five games to the Anaheim Ducks in 2007. Since then, he hadn't been past the second round until this year.
Last Monday in Game 4, Fisher played the game of his life on his 37th birthday to reach a new career pinnacle by tying the Final at 2-2. His contract is up at the end of this season and there's talk that Fisher might retire, especially if the Preds win the Cup. Given everything that he has been through, there's no doubt that Fisher understands the urgency of the situation.
My other Canucks tidbit for today is a look at an alternate reality.
I'm currently reading Wayne Gretzky's book "99: Stories of the Game," which came out last fall. It's basically a collection of reminiscences from The Great One, giving him plenty of time time laud Gordie Howe and the 80s Oilers, as he loves to do.
As you know, Gretzky's not one to court controversial opinions and rarely has a bad word to say about anybody, so I was shocked when I read how he described what happened when he almost signed with the Canucks during the summer of 1996.
After his brief stint with the St. Louis Blues to end off the 1995-96 season, Gretzky became an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 1996. At 35, he was looking for the right setting to finish out his NHL career.
I remember that Gretzky was dealing with some back issues during his time with the Blues and looked like his best years were behind him but in hindsight, with the Dead Puck Era just around the corner, his numbers were still really solid—I guess I had really been comparing him to his younger self.
In 1995-96, Gretzky had 81 points in 62 games with the Kings, then followed that up with 21 points in 18 games with the Blues in the regular season and another 16 points in 13 games in the playoffs.
Anyway—Gretzky said his first choice as a free agent was Toronto, but the timing wasn't right for the organization financially at that juncture. From there, he turned his sights to Vancouver—two years off a run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Gretzky said he relished the idea of playing under Pat Quinn—the team's GM at the time—and taking to the ice with Pavel Bure, Alexander Mogilny, Martin Gelinas and Trevor Linden, among others.
"Mike (Barnett, his agent) and I flew on our own dime to Vancouver as a show of good faith," writes Gretzky. "I loved the team, loved the city..."
Negotiations were positive but went long into the night. When Barnett told Canucks VP Stan McCammon that he'd have a definite answer first thing in the morning, McCammon insisted that he needed the deal complete that night.
Stan said, "If you don't give me an answer now, the offer's off the table."
Barnett went to Gretzky's hotel room and woke him up. "I told him, 'I like it, but I'm not going to call Janet in the middle of the night and I'm not going to make the decision without talking to her. So if they honestly are giving me an ultimatum after we've come up here at our own expense and told them we like the offer and given our word we were not going to shop it, then it's up to them if they take it off the table, but I hope that they don't."
Not only did McCammon hold true to his word and take the offer off the table, he also sent out a fax to every other team in the league to let them know that the Canucks were ceasing negotiations.
Before Gretzky and Barnett had even made it back to California, they'd been tracked down by the New York Rangers. Those negotiations went just fine, and Gretzky became a Ranger soon after to play out his last three seasons.
He didn't win another Cup, but check out his point totals in New York:
1996-97: 82 games, 97 points
1997-98: 82 games, 90 points
1998-99: 70 games, 62 points
He led the Rangers in scoring all three years and they reached the Eastern Conference Final in his first season, but failed to make the playoffs in the latter two years.
Meanwhile, the Canucks started their downward spiral, missing the playoffs for four straight years and hitting rock bottom in 1998-99 with 58 points.
I don't think I ever believed that Gretzky had been that close to becoming a Vancouver Canuck. How different would things have been if McCammon had been willing to wait until morning?
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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