Music: {allcanada} Canucks' third line chips in with grit, speed, winning goal

Thursday, June 2, 2011

{allcanada} Canucks' third line chips in with grit, speed, winning goal

VANCOUVER — What happens when you combine a heavily tattooed Ontario native, a widely despised agitator from Quebec and a Danish speedster?

For the Vancouver Canucks, you get the Redemption Line.

Jannik Hansen, Raffi Torres and Maxim Lapierre — three guys worried about job security last summer — combined on Torres' winning goal with 18.5 seconds left in Game 1 Wednesday. They also had 10 hits and 10 shots, forcing Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas to make some of his best saves before Torres finally converted a nice no-look feed from Hansen to give the Canucks a 1-0 win and a 1-0 series lead in the Stanley Cup Final.

Not bad when you consider Torres didn't have a job two weeks before training camp, Lapierre is on his third team this season, and Hansen was told he had to add grit to his speed if he wanted to stay in the NHL.

"Yeah, I got a couple wake-up calls," Hansen said of being a healthy scratch and sent to the American Hockey League for five games last season. "Obviously not being in a lineup is a big one. Obviously if you want to play on a team that's going to be competitive and compete for the Cup, you need to fill whatever role is given to you.

"You look at our lineup, there are only so many players that can play on the first and second line. If you don't have the skills that they do, you have to find a different way to contribute."

Hansen has always had the wheels to be a top-six NHL forward. But after years of his hands failing to convert the chances his feet created, Hansen was told he needed to play with more edge. That, combined with lessons from three-time Stanley Cup winner Mike Keane during a trip to the minors last season, helped turn things around.

"He hinted strongly I should work on my defensive game, making sure I can play in my own end as well as being physical," said Hansen, who also become a key part of the Canucks' No. 1 penalty kill in the regular season. "It just kind of carried over toward my year here that that's the type of style they wanted me to play. You can always control how you're skating and finishing your checks."

Finishing checks has never been a problem for Torres, but the way he did late in the season left him lost at times in the playoffs. Suspended for the final two games of the regular season and first two of the playoffs for a head hit on the Edmonton Oilers' Jordan Eberle, Torres was back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after leveling the Chicago Blackhawks' Brent Seabrook in the first round.

Though he escaped suspension, Torres found himself passing up hits. But after talking with teammate Manny Malhotra, he had five in Game 1 against Boston.

"Manny has been nothing but a positive influence on me throughout the season and throughout the course of the playoffs," he said. "He's just one of those guys that said, 'Hey Raffi, just go out there and relax. At the end of the day, your game is a meat-and-potato type of game. Don't try to do anything out of the your element. Just go out and play hockey, which is north-south, getting pucks, feet moving.' He kind of puts that into my head every day."

It has been a pretty good fit with Hansen's speed. And Lapierre, who also played this season on the Montreal Canadiens and Anaheim Ducks, wins faceoffs, chips in offensively and is always the first one back in his own end.

"You can say we fill different roles, but we play the same style and have the same mentality," Hansen said. "Just the fact we're able to get in on the forecheck, making the D look around us, maybe rush a play a little more than they wanted to in the first place."

And sometimes even chip in with a game-winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final.