Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Could tonight be the night?
The Abbotsford Canucks have a chance to win their first championship when they host the Charlotte Checkers in Game 5 of the Calder Cup Finals. Back-to-back home wins this week, by a combined score of 9-3, have given the Canucks a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
The challenge is to treat tonight’s game as just another night at the rink when it is anything but.
“Yeah, it’d be special,” Surrey, B.C., native Arshdeep Bains said of the chance to win the Calder Cup at home, where fans have packed Abbotsford Centre and this spring’s pursuit has attracted attention from across the Lower Mainland and beyond.
“I think we’ve been giving ourselves the best opportunity. It’s hard to get this opportunity when you’re the lower-seed team, but we’re here right now.”
The Canucks’ run through the Calder Cup Playoffs started April 23 and has taken the team through five rounds and 22 games. All kinds of historical angles are at play tonight. Vancouver affiliates have reached the Calder Cup Finals three times (1988, 2009 and 2015), falling short each time. As it is, no Vancouver affiliate has even come this close to winning the Cup. They could also become the first Canadian team to win the AHL title since the Toronto Marlies’ victory in 2018.
Longer-term developmental implications also exist for the organization. A sensational postseason for goaltender Artūrs Šilovs certainly puts him fully in the discussion for full-time work with Vancouver next season. Forward Linus Karlsson has a league-leading 23 points (11 goals, 12 assists) on this playoff run. Bains has been an all-everything option for head coach Manny Malhotra and has been complemented well by center Max Sasson. First-round pick Jonathan Lekkerimäki stepped back into the Abbotsford lineup this week and produced two goals in Game 4. Danila Klimovich has shown big-game abilities with a pair of overtime goals this postseason. Sammy Blais has shown that he can be a game-changing, dominant forechecking presence. Ty Mueller has had an excellent rookie season. On the back end, Kirill Kudryavtsev, Victor Mancini and Jett Woo are among the prospects who all look capable of competing for NHL work.
Malhotra, of course, shows no sign of feeling any pressure. A Calder Cup winner as a player in 2000, the first-year coach came into the NHL as a first-round pick himself and ended up playing 991 games at that level. He then went into the coaching business as an assistant with Vancouver and Toronto, two pressure-filled environments.
Malhotra has made it clear that his players are to view tonight no differently from any other game, no matter the stakes.
“We’ll continue to prepare like we have the first four rounds and throughout this round,” Malhotra said after Game 4. “We’ll analyze the video and clean up things that we want to improve on, but we will turn the page and have that next-game mentality that has gotten us to this point.”
And of course, the Checkers will be looking to move the series back to Charlotte. Captain Chase Wouters will have his teammates well aware of that fact.
“We’ve got to flip the page,” Wouters stressed following Game 4. “They’re a really good team over there. It’s going to be a tall task for the next game. There’s a lot of work left to do.”
