An oral history of the Canucks bittersweet but thrilling loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames in the 1989 playoffs.
The Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames played thrilling hockey in the 1989 Smythe Division semi final. And Game 7, which decided it all, was a fitting finish, right up until its final moment.
Tony Tanti, Right wing: “We got on a roll in the playoffs and we should have won. We played our hearts out. It was a good bunch of guys. And you know, those are things that 30 years later, you start thinking ‘that was pretty neat.’ Smyl: “Bob McCammon and Jack McIlhargey, they put a game plan together and it was great. … We blew the zone. We’d always have someone up the ice. We’d back them up. Then we’d forecheck aggressively. We always had a play up the ice. So all the D had to do was just bang it up. Usually the right winger was the guy blowing the zone, so the D man would just bang it up as quickly as possible. And then he’d turn it around and bump it back to the centreman and the left winger who were coming up.
In overtime, the Canucks had plenty of chances. Smyl had a breakaway which Vernon stoned him on, while Tanti got off a heavy one-timed slap shot.Tanti: “What I remember the most is, besides the goal, was Mike Vernon making that save on me in overtime. I saw him in the summer after he won the cup up at Gallagher’s Canyon playing golf and he goes, ‘you had me beat, it was just, I was really lucky.’”
Brian Burke, assistant general manager: “Thanks to Pat Quinn, we kind of went on a slingshot acceleration. When Pat got here, we weren’t very good. We didn’t draw very well. In two years, we were selling off the Pacific Coliseum. We brought in new players.”
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