NHL Playoffs 2012: Comeback Blueprints for Penguins and Canucks

The 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs are less than a week old, and two heavy favorites to make it all the way to the finals are hanging on for dear life.

In the east, the Pittsburgh Penguins find themselves in a 3-0 series hole against the Philadelphia Flyers. It's not what many people expected to happen, as the Penguins seemed primed for a run to the finals after Sidney Crosby returned to action in March.

Out west, the top-seeded Vancouver Canucks find themselves in a 3-0 series hole against the eighth-seeded Los Angeles Kings, a team that barely made the postseason in the first place. The Canucks were in the Stanley Cup finals a year ago, and now they find themselves on the brink of elimination.

In short, things aren't looking so hot for either team.

But since we're talking about hockey, there's hope for both the Penguins and the Canucks. Comebacks from 3-0 deficits can happen, and both the Penguins and Canucks can pull one off if they stick to a plan.

Plans like these.

Pittsburgh Penguins

First and foremost, the Penguins simply need to keep the Flyers from putting the puck in the net. Exactly how they're going to do that is the iffy part. 

It's not all Marc-Andre Fleury's fault, but he's obviously not having the greatest series of his career. In three games, he's allowed 17 goals. That, for the record, is not a good average. The thought of calculating it and looking at the number is too scary, so I'm not going to try it.

[Note: Fleury's GAA is 6.34. Boo!].

We know that Fleury is better than he's shown in the first three games of this series. For the Penguins to survive, he just has to be better. Not exactly rocket surgery, but that doesn't make it any less true.

There's also the issue of the Penguins helping Fleury out by making sure he has fewer shots to stop. The team has been more concerned with putting the puck in the net at the other end than stopping the puck from going into their own goal, and that's something that needs to change.

Three games into this series, the Penguins should know that the Flyers are not a team that they can simply hope to outscore.

When the Penguins aren't controlling the puck, they'll have to be much more proactive about getting bodies back on defense, and they could also stand to be much more physical with Philadelphia's offensive threats. They've had it way too easy in the first three games of this series.

Focusing their efforts on defense will mean that the Penguins will have to sacrifice some of their focus on scoring goals, but it has to be done. Besides, given the scorers the Penguins have at their disposal, the goals will come. They'll know they're doing well when they don't need to score nine of them to beat the Flyers.

It's not all about strategy. The Flyers have beaten the Penguins down psychologically in this series, and the effect that beating has had on Pittsburgh's discipline was self-evident in Game 3. The Penguins lost their cool.

The only thing they can do is forget about it. They need to draw up a plan to get back in this series, and stick to it no matter what kind of tactics the Flyers use to try and finish them off.

Vancouver Canucks

It's simple. All the Canucks need is Daniel Sedin back out on the ice. Once he returns, the Canucks will have their top goal-scorer back, and Henrik Sedin's play will be much better.

It didn't look like the Canucks were going to be lucky enough to have Daniel Sedin in this series. But now, the word from the Vancouver Sun is that Sedin is on his way to Los Angeles and that he will be practicing with the team on Tuesday.

Nobody is saying that Sedin will play. Not yet, anyway. But if nothing else, this is a very good sign.

The Canucks need a little scoring punch. They've scored a grand total of four goals against the Kings so far, and they were shut out by Jonathan Quick in Game 3 after the series shifted its theater to Los Angeles. Quick is an outstanding goalie, and the Canucks simply haven't been able to get anything past him.

It doesn't help that the Canucks are zero-for-14 on power plays in the series's first three games, allowing two short-handed goals in the process. Sloppy execution like that will put you in a 3-0 hole in the blink of an eye.

On the bright side, switching to Cory Schneider ahead of Game 3 panned out nicely, and it reflects well on the Canucks that Scheider only faced 20 shots. Roberto Luongo had to stop nearly twice as many in Game 1.

Sticking with the hot hand in net is probably the best idea for the Canucks. Whoever's in net, the team needs to keep playing solidly on the defensive end. That's the one thing the Canucks have done well in this series.

Offensively, the return of Sedin could conceivably give the Canucks a boost. Regardless of whether or not he returns, the Canucks simply have to hope for better luck.

They don't have the goals to show for it, but they've made Quick stop a lot of shots in the last two games of this series. In all, they've put 89 shots on him, and he's saved all but two of them.

Even for Quick, that's a little too good. If the Canucks keep doing what they're doing at LA's end of the ice, they're bound to run into a few goals.

As long as they keep up the defensive effort, the Canucks will be able to steal one game, and then two, and then they're on their way.