Canucks vs Sharks - Renewing Acquaintances

Tomorrow night the San Jose Sharks invade Rogers Arena to take on the Vancouver Canucks in Game1 of the NHL Western Conference Quarter-Finals.  These teams have met once before with the Canucks taking out the Sharks in 5 games in the Western Conference Final on their way to losing in Game 7 of the 2010-2011 Stanley Cup Finals to the Boston Bruins.

Both teams have made a few changes since then.  For the Canucks the most noticeable change
comes in goal where Cory Schneider has wrestled away the starting job from Roberto Luongo.  The Canucks have since subtracted, most notably, Sami Salo, Raffi Torres, Mikael Samuelsson, Aaron Rome, Christian Ehrhoff, and Cody Hodgson and have added Zack Kassian,  Jason Garrison, and Derek Roy.

The Sharks are very different team from the one that lost to the Canucks in 2011 but still have a large part of their core intact.  Noticeable departees include Ryane Clowe, Dany Heatley, Jamie McGinn, Devin Setoguchi, and Douglas Murray.  They've since brought in Scott Gomez, Brett Burns, Raffi Torres, and Martin Havlat.
The Sharks started off the season on fire, especially Patrick Marleau who started the season with 4 straight multiple-goal games becoming only the second player in NHL history, and the first since 1917, to complete such a feat.  Incidentally it was the Cory Schneider and the Canucks who stopped the streak keeping Marleau to only one goal.

I think this will be an entertaining series with both teams possessing strong goaltending, solid defensive play, and good offensive ability.  It will be interesting to see how the special teams battle plays out with the Canucks starting the season off terribly on both the power-play and the penalty kill.  They have improved dramatically in the last 10-12 games coinciding, incidentally, with the return of Ryan Kesler from injury.  The Canucks will need a healthy and motivated Kesler playing at his best to offset some of San Jose's dynamic forwards, namely Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, and Marleau.
I'm expecting a long series and its going to come down to special teams and which team can stay healthy.

Sharks in 7

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