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It's do or die for theVancouver Canuckson Thursday night, as they face the Anaheim Ducks ina crucial Game 5 of theirsecond-round 2007 NHL playoff series. Anaheim knocked off Vancouver 3-2 in overtime on Tuesday afterTravis Moen beat goalie Roberto Luongo early in the extra frame to give the Ducks a 3-1series lead. The Canucks blew ahuge opportunity to even up the series in that hockey game aftertaking a 2-0 lead into the third period. Markus Naslund buried his fourth goalof the playoffs in thefirst period to get Vancouver on the board, while Brendan Morrisonnetted his first postseason goal in thesecond period to give the Canucks atwo-goal lead. The Ducks began chipping away at Vancouver's lead early inthe third after Chris Pronger found the back of the net for his third goal ofthe season. A bruised and battered Teemu Selanne tied it for Anaheim with his third postseason marker with five minutesremaining, to send the game to OT where Moen finished off Vancouver. Bet on Hockey at WagerWeb.com!
The Canucks wasted another solid performance from Luongo, who stopped 27 of the 30shots the Ducks fired at him. Jean-Sebastien Giguere put together another strong game between thepipes for Anaheim after making 24 saves on 26 shots. If the Canucks hope to survive beyond Game 5, they're going to have tofind a way to score more goals. If Luongo is in top form the Canucks can almostbe guaranteed that he'll hold the Ducks to three goals or less. That hasn'tmeant much for Vancouver in this series though, as they havefailed to score more than two goals in any game. Even the Canucks' one win in thisseries came by a lame duck score of 2-1. The only goal scorer carryinghis weight for Vancouver in this series so far is MarkusNaslund. The Canucks have only scored seven goals in the entire series andNaslund is responsible for three of them. And Jeff Cowan, who scored only sevengoals during the regular season, has two goals in the series. Vancouver's other bigweapons, the Sedin twins, have been practically shut out in the series. DanielSedin - the team's leadingscorer during the season - has a goal and an assist and a -2 rating in theseries, while his brother Henrik has been held pointless while registering a -3rating. Game 6 goes Thursday night at 9:00 pm ET in Vancouver. View Hockey Live Lines now! |
