B's Team of the Week #1 (Vancouver Canucks)

Win or lose, whatever happens the Canucks can say they've done the unthinkable. To say that the last two games the Vancouver won were luck you must be out of your mind. They are currently tied with the Vegas Golden Knights after coming back from a three games to one deficit. They are a team that has done nothing but persevere this entire postseason.

This is a team here, that has been behind the eight ball at some point in every single series thus far. To get to this series, they had to first beat a fierce Wild team that came out swinging in game one. That series was a best of five, so a one game lead is a lot more valuable in that series than against a team such as the Knights. They wound up winning the next three sending the Wild packing after giving a subpar performance in game one.

In series number two they wound up blowing a two game lead against the defending champion St. Louis Blues, which didn't ever put them in a position where they were losing in the series, but put them in a "must-win" type of game. This is because once the Blues get going they don't let up. The Canucks wound up winning both of the next two games, winning by scores of (4-3) and (6-2). This put them in position to play the heavily favored Knights.

In this series, nothing has been a given. The Knights won game one, by five goals and without giving up a goal. At this point it looked like it was going to be a short series with two amazing goalies in Robin Lehner and Marc Andre Fleury in the rotation for the Knights. They wound up starting Lehner in every game except for one. He has played okay, definitely not on the level of his counterpart, Fleury on his trip to the Stanley Cup two years ago. Lehner, mind you, is a goalie that won the MVP for goalies last year. So to put his starting job in jeopardy like this is without a doubt an accomplishment.

After losing game one, Canucks star player Elias Petersson and their goalie Jacob Markstrom, lead them to a three goal victory over the Knights. Unfortunately, Markstrom then had to play in back to back games and got hurt in the second game on Sunday. That meant their young second year goalie Thatcher Demko had to step up. In game five on Tuesday, he stopped forty-two shots on forty-three attempts in their one goal win over Vegas. Then in game six, the young goalie stopped all forty-eight shots he faced. His team backed him up with four goals against the very strong and battle tested Vegas Golden Knights.

With all this being said, to come back against a really good team like the Golden Knights, you need to play very well. This team played extremely well with a twenty-four year old goalie and a twenty-one year old leader. For every single reason and every single sentence I have written here, my team of the week is none other than the Vancouver Canucks. And regardless of what happens tonight, they were the most deserving team of this award this past week.