Is this the year the Vancouver Canucks finally prove they’re for real?

The Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup, and were a mess a year ago. But this season everything seems to be going their way

Around this time last year, the Vancouver Canucks were verging on disarray. In the middle of January, team president Jim Rutherford held a press conference to address the team's terrible season, which began with eight straight losses and didn't improve much from then on. I'm pretty disappointed in the job I've done," Rutherford said at the time. The team's fans felt the same way, especially regarding how the team was treating then-coach, Bruce Boudreau, who was rumoured to be on the chopping block, with Rick Tocchet apparently already waiting in the wings to take over. At the presser, Rutherford could merely only offer that Bruce is our coach, and that's the way it is today." The Canucks fired Boudreau a few days later and, as predicted, Tocchet took over. It was messy.

But winning clears things up - and the Canucks have done a lot of it this year. As the NHL pauses this week for the All Star break, the Canucks sit atop not just the Pacific Division, but the entire Western Conference. They went 8-0-2 through their last 10 games before the break, a record second only in the West to the streaking Edmonton Oilers, who the Canucks shocked with back-to-back defeats to open the season - losses that sent the Oilers, a pre-season Stanley Cup favourite, reeling for months.