This week in Canucks history: Raffi Torres lifts Canucks in Game 1 of 2011 final

Ryan Kesler kept the toe of his left skate on the ice as he tipped the puck into the Bruins' zone. There was half a minute to go in game one of the Stanley Cup Final, and the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins were locked in a scoreless tie. The next goal would win.

Kesler spun around just inside the blue line. Spotting a streaking Jannik Hansen in the middle of the ice, he threw the puck across.

As two Boston players gravitated toward Kesler, Vancouver Canucks' depth forward Raffi Torres, seeing the two-on-one opportunity, drove to the far post. Hansen fed him, eluding the Bruins' captain Zdeno Chara, who sled to block the pass. Torres tipped the puck in.

Rogers Arena goes wild when Raffi Torres scored

Rogers Arena, like it always has when the Canucks are in the playoffs, erupted. Beers flew as the fans jumped in celebration. The Canucks were three wins away from their first Stanley Cup.

Similar scenes played out at viewing parties across the city, including the infamous downtown location outside the CBC building, where a big screen was set up.

Torres scored three goals in the 2011 playoffs. He scored four in the Edmonton Oilers' Cinderella 2006 run that also ended in game seven of the cup finals. None of those goals could top this one.

Torres was an unlikely hero. He had signed in Vancouver the previous offseason on a one-year, $1 million contract and spent most of the season on a shutdown line with Hansen and Manny Malhotra. During the season, he went through a 23-game goalless drought.

But in game one of the Stanley Cup Final, Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault gave him a chance. Vigneault had played his top two lines for most of the period. Yet with half a minute to go, he opted to play Torres.

Torres went to the net. Vigneault's choice to play him proved to be clutch, and the Canucks would soon be up 1-0 in the series.

Vancouver would go on to lose the series in seven games, but the memory of Torres' goal, like the other big moments from 2011, still lives on.

For one night, for one moment, it seemed as if Vancouver would win it all. And it came from one of the team's most unlikely sources. And 13 years later, it still stands as one of the biggest goals in Canucks history, on a tier just below Alex Burrows slaying the dragon and Pavel Bure's game seven overtime goal against the Calgary Flames in 1994.

It's moments like these that players and fans look back on from that year. Moments that define a playoff run that, like each one in team history, has fallen short, but evoke memories that last a lifetime.