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AP Photo/Julie Jacobson
Ice Ice Baby

Breaking the Ice: Canucks on the brink of glory after Game 5 win

Missed last night’s Stanley Cup Finals game? We’ve got all the details and the highlights here.

The game: Vancouver beat Boston 1-0

The series: The Canucks take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

The lowdown: Roberto Luongo went for another walk on the picturesque Vancouver seawall before Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals, clearing his mind of criticism and failure while soaking in an anxious city’s soothing beauty.

With a peaceful mind, Luongo achieved a small slice of perfection: a shutout in the biggest game of his NHL career.

And when Maxim Lapierre finally managed one goal against Tim Thomas, Luongo’s brilliant Boston counterpart, Luongo carried Vancouver to the verge of its first championship Friday night, taking a 3-2 series lead with a 1-0 victory over the Boston Bruins.

The last step will be no stroll in the park, but Luongo thinks the Canucks have the right mindset to do it — hopefully in Game 6 in Boston on Monday.

“We do whatever it takes, and that’s what we need to do if we want to win the last one here,” said Luongo, who stopped 31 shots in his fourth shutout of the postseason.

I play the game because I love it and I want to win the Stanley Cup, so that’s the only motivation I need right now. I try to block everything else out. Sometimes it’s hard to do in a city like this. You can’t let those things affect you, because then they will affect your game.

Luongo gave up eight goals in Game 3 and was pulled from Game 4, but nothing fazed him in Game 5 — not even the meager production of his struggling teammates, who have managed to move within one win of their franchise’s first championship despite scoring just six goals against Thomas in five finals games.

“He’s unreal,” Vancouver forward Alex Burrows said. “We have so much confidence in him, and he doesn’t listen to people outside this locker room. We know he’s the best goalie in the league.”

Early in the third period, Vancouver finally ended Thomas’ shutout streak at 110 minutes, 42 seconds dating to Game 3 with an improvisational gem of a goal.

With every other scoring tactic failing over the last three games, Vancouver defenseman Kevin Bieksa deliberately put a shot wide of the net, counting on the aggressive Thomas to react to it. The next moment was a study in hockey geometry: The puck caromed off the boards behind Thomas’ net and popped out on the far side, where Lapierre banged it into the only sliver of net Thomas couldn’t cover.

Thomas made only one mistake in Game 5, but it was enough.

“Those are usually the kind of goals that go in when no one is scoring,” Thomas said.

A lot of times it’s going to be that fluke one off the boards, and Lapierre didn’t even get the shot off clean. If he got the shot off clean, I would have been able to read it better and would have had a better chance at it.

– Match report by AP