They are no longer tiptoeing around in terror on the penalty kill. And they have punched holes in the Kings' goaltending large enough to drive an Olympia icemaking machine through. It was 7-2 Friday night — four goals on starter Jonathan Quick, two on his replacement Erik Ersberg, then another on Quick.

The Canucks clearly have the Kings dazed and on the ropes after Friday night's lopsided 7-2 win in Game 5 of the best-of-seven Western Conference quarter-final series at General Motors Place. They can deliver the knockout punch Sunday night at the Staples Center.

Since being snubbed for the Games (the Swedish coach instead went with journeyman plugger Mattias Weinhandle from Modo — you'd think he had a salary cap, too), the 33-year-old Samuelsson has scored 27 goals in his last 40 games.

Maybe the best part for the Los Angeles Kings is that just about every possible thing went wrong. It might make it all the easier to turn the page on Friday's 7-2 shellacking administered by the Vancouver Canucks at GM Place.

And how about the "Let's Go Alberts" chants?"That was awesome," Bieksa said. "I don't think too many guys on the bench knew what they were saying, because it was going down the bench, 'What are they saying? What are they saying?' That's great. I don't know how he was handling the fans being negative towards him. I don’t think the fans should be like that in any case. It definitely doesn't help out the cause if the guy's not playing the way he wants to.

The shots on goal between the two teams were pretty equal with the Canucks edging the Kings 30 to 26, but what the night came down to is that Luongo was better than whoever was down at the other end of the rink. Now Luongo, Quick and Ersberg have all been pulled in a game. Luongo made some big saves tonight and looked as solid in net as he has looked all series.

As for the Kings - besides the fact Richard Clune is lucky he's alive - this stings. As close as they were to a 3-1 series lead, now they're behind and back in their barn on Sunday motivated as all hell to forget every second of this affair and get a huge win in front of their fans.

For the first time this post-season the Vancouver Canucks fired on all cylinders. The result was pretty special as the home team swamped L.A. in virtually every aspect of the game led by the Sedin twins, who are now officially ascending into super-star level by adding consistently great playoff performances to their already formidable resumes.