It's far too early to panic for the Vancouver Canucks.

But this is a pretty unique situation, one with plenty of recent history, and the Chicago Blackhawks are the defending Stanley Cup champs.

(And Dave Bolland's back in the lineup.)

What is clear, though, is that Game 5 is suddenly incredibly important for Vancouver, as after getting routed 7-2 in Chicago in Game 4 to extend the series, the last thing the Canucks want is to lose another game, have to get back on another plane and play Game 6 in hostile territory.

Historically speaking, this is pretty safe territory. Teams up 3-1 in a series and playing Game 5 at home have ended things in that game two-thirds of the time and gone on to win the series more than 92 per cent of the time.

But there's also that recent history, against the Blackhawks, with Vancouver losing to Chicago convincingly in the second round in the past two years and netminder Roberto Luongo allowing 21 goals in each six game series.

After four games, he's up to only 11 and has looked far calmer than previous outings against the 'Hawks.

Well until Game 4.

To be fair, you couldn't pin much of this one on Luongo, not with how poorly the team played in front of him. Vancouver was out shot 2-to-1 after two periods and the defensive blunders came one after another, especially during a second period which had to be their worst 20 minutes of the year.

Few 117-point teams get waxed like this, but it did happen a couple times to the Canucks early on this year.

On Oct. 19, they lost 6-2 to the Minnesota Wild.

A month later, on Nov. 20, it was 7-1 at home against the Blackhawks.

They then lost again the next night to the Phoenix Coyotes, but after that, it's been pretty smooth sailing, with Vancouver posting an incredible 47-12-9 record between that game and Tuesday's lopsided loss to Chicago.

Adversity has, in other words, been in short supply of late, even with all of the injuries on the blueline. And now there's some.

Even if all they need is one win in the next three games to end this series.

The truth is, going into Game 4, most of Vancouver was pondering who the Canucks were going to face in Round 2. Now, there's the small matter of finishing off the defending champs, which won't be nearly as easy a task as all of those post-Game 3 eulogies said.

Game 5 is suddenly an enormously important one for the Canucks, one where they can stomp out any hope of a miraculous Chicago comeback, prove that they have, in fact, bested their demons and are one of the true contenders in these parity-filled playoffs.

"We got outworked by the opposition," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said after the game. "It was about our work ethic and we can fix that easily. We're going to park this one, turn the page on it and get ready for the next one."

"It's definitely what we needed," Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews said. "Not only did we need a win, but it was great to win big and be able to prove a point. We wanted to go out there and play for each other and I think everything finally snowballed in our favour."

Now all eyes shift to Thursday night in Vancouver.

We've finally got a series, folks.