The Canucks and Sharks are similar teams. Both franchises boast talent-laded clubs that have had tons of regular-season success recently only to fall short of expectations come playoff time.

The winner of this series will at least by vindicated with a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. Canucks fans have been waiting 17 years for their club to make it back to the final stage, while San Jose supporters have been looking forward to playing for Lord Stanley's Cup ever since the franchise began play in the fall of 1991.

Of course, either one of these teams would have an excellent chance at winning their franchise's first Stanley Cup title once they've made it to the next round.

As the top overall seed in the NHL, Vancouver would seem to have an advantage in this conference finals encounter. However, as alluded to above, regular- season success has not carried much weight for either of these teams in recent playoff years and shouldn't be the main factor in this series either.

The Canucks did get the better of San Jose during the season, winning three out of four encounters and scoring 16 goals along the way.

Niemi was 1-2-1 with a 3.64 GAA against Vancouver this year. However, he was spectacular in the conference finals against the Sharks last year, stopping 129-of-136 shots (.949 save percentage) for Chicago in the sweep over San Jose.

Luongo played in just two games against San Jose this season and was 1-0-1 with a 0.96 GAA and .975 save percentage. All told, he stopped 77-of-79 shots thrown his way by the Sharks in 2010-11. but is 7-10-2 with a tie and a 2.77 GAA in 20 career tests against San Jose.

The Sharks and Canucks have never faced each other in the playoffs, but this first postseason encounters figures to be an evenly-matched affair. The clubs are built the same way, with star forwards and an overall balanced scoring attack counted as team strengths.

Vancouver has an edge in defensive depth and the Canucks also have the goaltender with the shinier pedigree in Luongo. However, Niemi has surpassed Luongo in postseason success in just two years as an NHLer and that closes any perceived edge for Vancouver in net.

Both clubs have been through a great deal of playoff adversity in recent seasons, but this year it's the Canucks who are better situated to represent the Western Conference in the Cup Finals.