Expect a close, hard-fought series between the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames. The intense rivals split their games in the 2015 regular season, posting 1-1 records in each other’s buildings.Rich Lam/Getty Images
In 1989, the Vancouver Canucks were massive underdogs to the NHL-best Calgary Flames in the first round of the playoffs.
Trevor Linden was a rookie. He broke his nose in Game 5, courtesy of a puck to the face, and in Game 6, with Vancouver facing elimination at home, Linden opened the scoring shorthanded to help drive the series to seven.
The Flames needed overtime in the final game and almost watched their magical season implode on a Stan Smyl breakaway. It was stymied by a Mike Vernon glove save, dramatically extended in a swoop that carried an entire city's hopes on it, before Joel Otto won it for Calgary.
The Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks do not often meet in the playoffs – but when they do, it's extraordinary. Each of the three first-round series the teams have contested in the past three decades has gone to seven games, and each Game 7 was pushed into overtime. And, each time, the series winner went on to the Stanley Cup final, the Flames in 1989 winning the trophy, the only championship either team has won.
The 2015 edition begins on Wednesday in Vancouver, and past could well be prologue. The series promises to be similarly intense. The teams split their four regular-season games, a win and a loss in Calgary and likewise in Vancouver.
The Flames haven't been in the playoffs in six years – and their coach Bob Hartley hasn't been there for eight years. The Canucks, meanwhile, have recovered from a disaster of a season a year ago, led by the renewed Sedins and rookie coach Willie Desjardins. Each side feels the tantalizing potential, the real possibility, of a postseason run.
It's not just hopeful imaginations. The gap between top and low seeds in this year's playoffs is the narrowest in the history of the NHL since 16 teams were included in the postseason. The Canucks finished only four points ahead of Calgary, with a slightly lesser goal differential.
Underpinning the 2015 meeting of the Canucks-Flames is the intense history. And while today's players don't have a direct connection to those past encounters – only Henrik and Daniel Sedin, in 2004, are part of the history – Linden believes the stories of the past do come to resonate with the players of the present.
"The players will understand," said Linden, the Canucks president, in an interview on the weekend.
Veterans of the great playoff battles, 2004 and previous, populate the bench and front office of each team.
Linden played in 1989, and led the Canucks in 1994, when the team upset the Flames and pushed the Stanley Cup to seven games before losing to the Rangers. In 2004, it was the Flames who did the upending, defeating the Canucks on the way to a seven-game Stanley Cup final.
"Talk about emotion – obviously intense," Linden said of the fever pitch of his three experiences. There's the geographic link across the Rocky Mountains, the cross-population of Calgarians in Vancouver and vice versa. "They've been fun to play in. I've been involved with nothing but great series."
Martin Gélinas, who was a Canuck in 1994, scored the overtime goal to win Game 7 in 2004 – and Linden was on the ice, on the penalty kill. The series saw a triple overtime in Game 6, slightly less wild than the three consecutive overtimes in 1994 the Canucks needed to recover from a 3-1 series disadvantage.
Gélinas is today an assistant coach in Calgary, while 2004 playoff linemate Craig Conroy is assistant general manager.
On the Vancouver side, Doug Lidster was a Canucks defenceman in the 1989 series and became a Canucks assistant coach last summer. Smyl, a life-long Canuck and current director of player development, had the failed breakaway in 1989 and was a top scorer on the 1982 Canucks, the year Vancouver won its first playoff series. The Canucks defeated the Flames in three straight and went on to reach the Cup final, where they were swept by the New York Islanders.
Vancouver's top goal scorer in 1982 was Thomas Gradin, another veteran watching off the ice this year. He's the team's associate head scout, and helped bring the Sedins to Vancouver in 1999. And Ron Delorme, long-time chief amateur scout, was a Canucks winger in 1982.
While there's history between the rivals, the biggest theme is redemption. Before missing the playoffs last year, Vancouver had won a single game in its past 11 postseason outings, futility that extends back to blowing a 3-2 series lead to Boston on home ice in the Cup final four years ago. Vancouver was then knocked out by the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 in 2012 and swept by the San Jose Sharks in 2013.
The Flames, meanwhile, have an ugly playoff history in the past quarter-century: Fifteen times the franchise missed the postseason and 10 times it lost in the first round. Twice the Flames reached the Cup final, the runs that began against Vancouver.