Black Ice Vancouver

“For when the One Great Scorer comes, to write against your name, he marks – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game.” -Grantland Rice

Vancouver won on Thursday night in only the insipid way a professional sporting team from Vancouver knows how to win – they won the loss.

Heading into Los Angeles with over 1/3 of their roster in the infirmary it was up to Coach Vee to pull a rabbit out of this conundrum.

Fortunately he had this proverbial hare – in the form of a game plan – grown and nurtured in the Franco-hockey heartland of Jacques Lemaire’s brain.
I speak of the one and only trap. As in steel.

Mitigated oh so often in the career of Vignault in order to squeeze a win out of a roster barely built for two (wins), it dawned on affable Bam-Bam that the only real reason to play the game, is to win. However the result that may materialize is immaterial.

The truth is, when the Canucks lose, it is way more fodder for the tabloid cannon.
And we lap it up just like the people of Jonestown drank the Kool-Aid. We love our heroes, but we love their miscues even more. We are lured by celebrities and so we punish them for our humiliation at being duped.

It’s human nature, we are drawn to the fuck ups of others. When perfection creeps in, we stand even more guarded, waiting in attack mode for any slip.

Right now the Canucks aren’t fuckin up by losing, their doing it by winning.

Next Up – Anaheim

Vancouver lost Tuesday night at the garage in two ways than one.

First they lost the game (badly), then they lost Ryan Johnson (to a neck injury suffered during the 2nd period) which makes 6 regulars missing from the line-up since the beginning of the season.

So that makes the following on the RIP list this year: Daniel Sedin, Pavol Demitra, Kyle Wellwood, Rick Rypien and Jannik Hansen to injury, as well as defenceman Sami Salo.

And no end insight.

So how did the Canucks fare after after losing Johnson in the 2nd period and opening the 3rd with a 2-1 lead?

Fuck-all, shit-ass to be frank.

And since Vancouver had less the second coming of Ron Francis and more the second coming of Francis Kane in their midst it was certain that the Canucks were doomed to defeat.

Games-within-games they lost. Special-team they lost. They even lost the loss, if that is possible.

The Canucks lost so badly that I seriously considered leaving the Propagandi show I was attending at the time of the loss just to witness, in real-time the loss, while it was happening in real-time.

What can I say? Just as the Canucks are scrapping the bottom of the depth barrel, a struggling Detroit team is finally getting a lock with their own depth issues.

(Physical act of throwing hands in the air)

Next Up – Los Angeles

“When (the Canucks) used to play a Saturday night game – say we were playing the Calgary Flames, we’d have 18,000 people in the building, and we’d average 60 ejections, eight guys tossed in the paddy wagons to sober up, two arrests. So, 60, 8 and 2 (…) We’d play the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it was 200, 60 and 20. Because the Maple Leaf fans would go out in the afternoon, have a few beers, wear their beautiful blue sweaters in, and taunt our fans.” -Brian Burke on the Vancouver/Toronto rivalry said to Cam Cole

In the interest of blogist integrity I decided to get myself arrested this weekend in order to see if Burke’s theory held any weight.

After an entire day of drinking and three-plus hour yelling at the TV screen it was time to fight.

Turns out I’m much better as a peripheral Internet commentator then as a drunken brawler.

That is not to say that my fisticuffs, and subsequent incarceration, wasn’t the indirect result of the Big Bad Terrible Bud’s arrival in town.

Quite the contrary.

Now if anyone could explain this to my girlfriends (and my friends) I might not be sitting alone with my foot in a cast and nursing a bruised jaw and fat lip all by myself.

The reason pro-sports exist in modern western developed countries is to replace the warrior-class that once dominated the interaction between tribes.

If we couldn’t trade for shit you had and we wanted, we would beat you for it, and sometimes we would just beat your for fun.

Civilized western democracy put a justified end to this ethos of barbary, however, Darwinian mechanics just haven’t managed to catch up to modern jurisprudence (not to mention good manners).

So we still want to destroy things, anything sometimes — for shits and giggles as we say back in Chilliwack.

We dawn our colors (for Vancouver fans these colors number those of the entire rainbow), tie our skates, grab our sticks and hit the ice in order to test our mettle.

We sport because our modern drive for competition still thrives despite politics and  science’s best efforts to propel our civility beyond the paleolithic era. Perhaps there will always be a Babylonian quality in all humans or perhaps technology has just evolved quicker then our monkey minds can keep up. Regardless, there seems to be a god-like tribal mentality in all of us and we use sport as the great arbiter between disputes.

Vancouver is better then Toronto, at least as far as hockey is concerned (and natural beauty. As far as seeing the Canucks beat the Leafs every year, there is no greater feeling.

Much better then seeing your face in the rear-view of a VPD cruiser, blood pouring down your face, pride (civic or otherwise) completely evaporated.

Let’s leave that shit for Leaf fans.

Next Up – Detroit

“I’m sure on this road trip you’ll hear everybody going ‘It’ll be nice to get home,’” Wilson said. “Those are just clichés you kind of hear if your team’s not winning, it’s nice to get on the road. When you’re on the road and you’re not winning, it’s nice to get home. You’ve got to remember, a lot of guys just speak in clichés, that’s what they’re trained to do. So I wouldn’t take anything more out of it than is already there.”

One game at a time, another reporter quipped.

“Yeah, one game at a time, the sun always shines,” Wilson said. “Blah, blah, blah.” -Ron Wilson the Leafs and cliches

There are only 15-20 really good games played in a season. All the rest (win, lose or draw) are throwaways.

It was Ray Ferraro who said that even if a guy scores 20 goals a season that still leaves 62 games where he’s scoring doodly-squat. The same goes for Vancouver. As I’ve been saying in the past, we need 20 goal scorers and we need wins like we had on Wednesday night.

While most games are going to be low-scoring, tight-checking affairs, every 3 or 4 games you need a match-up that murders. Chicago was obviously ripe for a spanking. Those snot nosed punks got what was coming and ten fold. Willie Mitchel’s hit on Jonathon Toews is going down as a top tenner and changed the way Vancouver will be viewed from here on in.

You can try that fancy pirouette figure skating move all you want bitch, I will smash yer fuckin face.

Vancouver is not a blue-collar town, but the team is built around an ethic of hard work gets results.

It doesn’t hurt that Luongo suddenly realized how much he actually get’s paid.

So let’s face it. The Canucks managed to sneak into the largest arena in the NHL and pass gas unnoticed for all it’s 20,000 inhabitants to consume.

It was the type of gas that a stealworker or a longshoreman would make in the lunch room right before he leaves to go back to work, leaving the others in the room to gasp and heave and wonder what exactly just happened. Why it stinks like shit.

The happy-go-lucky, hard-working, gassy, longshoreman with a bit of an edge — that is who this Canucks team really represents.

So glad they finally found their identity.

Next Up – Toronto

“To err is human, to forgive divine.” -Alexander Pope

At some point, bad behavior catches up with you. Whether immediately or years down the road the long term effects can be catastrophic, not just on how a team is viewed in the present, but how it effects the standings later down the road.

The Canucks may be digging a hole that will turn against them later in the season, despite how well they play down the stretch. Perhaps the slow start is human. After all they have lost two top-six forwards and two top-six defensemen respectively. The failure of this group to manufacture wins, however, is irritating now, but may be unforgivable down the road.

Five months ago Luongo played his worst possible game at the worst possible time in his career and as a Canuck.

The time for turning the corner for the Canucks is now.

They may or may not continue with their impulsive, sloppy, arrogant play or they may pick up their game by the bootstraps and play the blue-collar, Coach Vee induced coma hockey that won them a division title three season ago (until more firepower arrives.)

One thing the Canucks are not (if we can reduced our selves to female analogies for a moment) is the skinny rich bitch from West Vancouver, much like the snot-nosed punks from Chicago. The BlackHawks have it all, they’ve been handed the world with a silver spoon, they know it, the Canucks know it. Move on.

Skinny bitch is not the Canucks game.

Their game is dependable if not exotic, cerebral if not sexy and (as mentioned before) blue-collar and not the least bit ostentatious or elitist.

Somehow at the beginning of the season detractors mistook this team for a starlet just because she had really nice tits (Luongo).

Beauty is fleeting in this league where journeymen are relegated to the minors or the KHL in lieu of younger, cheaper, faster talent.

Mike Gillis knows who this team is, so does Coach Vee. The media and the fans seem to be catching on. Maybe once the team realizes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder they might start winning some hockey games.

“There is scarcely a goal he has scored, or a chance he has missed, which, if asked, he cannot recreate in detail, setting each teammate and opponent into place with the precision of a chess master replaying a game. The joy of it all is that we have found him, that the game is so much a part of our lives that when a Wayne Gretzky is born we will find him. The sorrow is that there may also be Wayne Gretzkys of the the piano or paint brush who, because we expose our young to hockey so much than to the arts, we will never know about.” -Peter Gzowski on the genius of Gretzky

Well I think that Gags and McIntyre summed up the weekend with their respective columns pretty well.

Basically the Canucks are going to have dust off their blue-collar game in order to weather injuries to Daniel Sedin, Pavol Demitra, Sami Salo and Mathew Schnieder. The loss of these four giants seem utterly drastic right now.

And their road game needs to improve from it’s current 0-4 graveyard in order to survive the 14 road-trip-from-hell-thanks-to-the-fucking-olympiad-bullshit-bullshit.

Seeing Calgary pummel the Canucks looked like it might be a regular occurance this season, but after destroying Calgary in the first 2 games last year (remember the Ripper had a pair of goals) this start should realign the balance of power for the rest of the season.

It’s a crap-shoot with these clowns. And speaking of shooting for shit the Canucks have the worst shooting-percentage in the league right now despite being 2nd in shots-on-goal, they are 18th in shooting-percentage.

It makes you think that under Coach Vee’s affable grin he must know that all the soul searching in world won’t produce an accuracte shot.

Oh well, just keep shooting the puck on net, hope for the lucky bounces.

(Here is were I don’t talk about the win against Minnesota on Saturday. The Canucks should have won 7-1 but barely eked out a one goal advantage after shooting everything they owned at a spectacular Backstromm. Kesler played his best game of the season but it still left me wanting more, um, goals)

And then that Russian vs. the Computer of a game against Edmonton.

Going 0-for on the power-play against a team with zero stars takes the Canucks from proverbial bad to proverbial worst.

And if you can’t depress the matter even more, it looks like Luongo is starting to pick up his games. But if the Canucks can’t find scoring (notice the talk of Vancouver’s cause celeb the past few years — secondary scoring — has gone silent) then we may harken back to three seasons ago whereby Louie stands on his head for the team, the team manufactures 2-1 wins down the stretch, clinches the division and subsequently qualifies for one more 2nd round exit (for the ages).

This is the depth of our history folks.

If you were depressed for any reason beside the Canucks before this weekend commenced, leave it to the boys in blue to drain all traces of serotonin from the system.

Next Up – Chicago

“Hockey is a form of disorderly conduct in which the score is kept.” -Doug Larson

Marty Turco is the most frustrating goalie to play against in the Western Conference. For whatever reason he holds a 17-6-3 mastery over the Vancouver Canucks, but last night his confidence looked like hubris as he dropped a 4-3 decision at GM Place via the skills competition.

So fuck you Turco.

But a second fuck you goes out to Vancouver fans. Attending my first game of the year, I couldn’t believe my eardrums when I heard the Vancouver faithless giving Turco the catcall after Ryan Kesler tied the game 1-1 in the second frame.

Is this city not aware that catcalling the goalie from the visiting team is very bad luck?

It seems like the bridge-and-tunnel brigade are planning the parade route one minute and the moment Louie let’s in a floater it’s: Panic! On the streets of London.

So fuck you Turco, and fuck you Vancouver fans and other then that, the game was swell. We cashed-in two points in the standings (within 2 points of making the playoffs) and teeter on the brink of .500 hockey for the first time all season.

This is revolutionary shit.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of revolutionary, that blue-haired Neanderthal that sells 50/50 tickets (for the past 17 years) is in serious need of a fatwa on his head.

I don’t care that I’m an agnostic. May he die and the Canucks lose Game 7 Cup Finals in Overtime forever in his eternal pit of hell.

This all from a 4-3 win.

Where is my valium? And where is my copy editor?

“Somebody get him a ladder” – Gord Millar on 5′11″ Rick Rypien fighting 6′7″ Hal Gill

Height jokes were flying fierce Wednesday night in Vancouver. Playing their second game in as many nights, the effort of Les Habitants equaled that of their collective stature.

While Hank had 4 points and every one on the team apart from Luongo seemed to hit the back of the net, it was the lackluster play of Carey Price, making his hometown debut, that stole the show.

The Canadiens prized first rounder from Les Draft has had a serpentine beginning to his career.

Allegations of immaturity and laziness have dogged an otherwise sparkling rookie campaign in the American League and the WHL.

And no, the goal lamp behind Carey Price was not broken, that was the Vancouver Canucks doing their best imitation of a shark after smelling blood. (In this case, the blood of a virgin).

There is little to criticize about the game, apart from TSN panning to Jerry Price’s forlorn face every five minutes.

It was hard not to feel for the guy.

Now in Vancouver, we are hard on our team for good reason, we haven’t won shit. Carey Price cleary has the legacy of Dryden and Roy resting square on his shoulders and a Montreal media hell bent on reminding him at every turn.

Vancouver fan’s are annoying, but they are a forgiving lot. Montreal fans: that’s another story.

Next up – Dallas

“Goaltending is a normal job, sure. How would you like it in your job if every time you made a small mistake, a red light went on over your desk and 15, 000 people stood up and yelled at you.” -Jacques Plante

Not long ago, friends and I were bemoaning the Northwest as the toughest division in the NHL. At any given point in the past decade you had the Canucks, Wild, Oilers and Flames in a dead heat, chasing perennial division champs, Colorado Avalanche for top seed in the Western Conference. Back in the day, Colorado was the Roadrunner to our collective Wile E. Coyote.

Then there was the lockout and everything changed. Massive free-agent acquisitions were gone, replaced by a salary cap induced parity meant to level the playing field for teams unable to compete at the fiduciary level of richer clubs. If you are a fan of the Vancouver Canucks, it was meant to get us over the hump of the previous decade, past the mighty Aves and into perennial contention.

All it seems to have done for the team is raise expectations so high that any sign of mediocrity is deemed a crushing defeat. Trade the Sedins, release Luongo and bring back Hodgeson so we can cement our spot in the basement and secure a proper shot at the Kirill Kabanov sweepstakes. This is our rallying cry every time things are amiss.

The ‘94 run was the first episode in Canucks’ history to legitimately raise expectations of the team. The Messier/Keenan era was a stop-gap on the road to the Brian Burke soap opera and the goal gluttony that epitomized the play of the Westcoast Express operatives.

With the Game 7 playoff win to St. Louis in 2003 we became hungier, demanding almost to the point of entitlement.

And then the Game 7 collapse to the Minnesota Wild.

This has been the hallmark of the Vancouver Canucks experience to date. Overwhelming hysterical expectation, followed by now fabled defeats. The same thing can be said about last year’s Game 6 nuclear meltdown — Katrina, Chernobyl and Bush’s political legacy all rolled up into one.

The problem is not so much the team, but the fan-base.

The team is simply a reflection of the mouth-breathers that follow them. Are Vancouver fans passionate or are they a collection of spoiled rich kids who suffer from, in psychology parlance, Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Let’s face fact, we live in the wealthiest, beautiful, most peaceful place in basically the world. But under this sheen lies an ugly megalomania that festers at the heart of our young city. It leaves one wondering if the hockey gods have simply delivered the fate we deserve.

What makes the entitlement even more fucked-up is the glaring fact Vancouver has not won in 38 seasons of professional play. We have won nothing, so quit planning the parade route already.

So if you want to blame the team, fine. But don’t point out the speck in your neighbor’s eye and forget about the log in your own.

Yes the Canucks sucked last night. The franchise goalie, fresh off a billion dollar contract, sports an embarrassing 4.55 GAA and a bewildering .820 save percentage, bad by even October standards. The Sedins are the best players on the ice, save capitalizing on their abundant spoil of chances. The much vaunted defense and secondary scoring has been illusion boarding on hallucinating.

Make no mistake, this team sucks. But I’m often left to ask this question: do we deserve anything less.

Next Up – Montreal

I think it was Scotty Bowman who said good teams don’t lose three games in a row.

There is little point for in-depth analysis at this juncture in the NHL season. The Canucks have stunk it up pretty bad the past two games, but that’s all it is — two measly games. The sum total of 2.4% of the season has now past us and the Canucks dwell where they dwell best. Need I remind everyone (I am not to the exclusion of this reminder) that there are 80 games left to go. 80 plus more hours of shinny to tear at the fabric of our collective civic mental health.

We are about to see what sort of mettle this team is made of. Unless their mettle is already apparent.

This team is almost identical to last year. Apart from new regulars joining at the forward, defense and backup goalie position the team has changed little from four months ago. This begs the questions, is this the same team that lost 11 games-in-a-row last year only to roar back in March to win 9-in-a-row and clinch the division title? Because that team had Vancouver Canucks written all over it, bold, italic and underlined. That team was the embodiment of what this club has stood for for the past 40 years:

Marginal play with flashes of brilliance followed by soul crushing defeat.

If the answer is yes, this is the same team, then there is little adjustment to be made. My suggestion to Vancouver sports fans this winter is to find a new hobby, much like your humble correspondent, in order to deflect the looming evisceration of defeat.

If the answer is no, this is not the same team, then folks, that article has not been written yet. Like trying to predict what my life would be like if my parents hadn’t gotten a divorce and I was born and raised in the sub-Saharan African village of Djenne, Mali. I could describe what that feeling could be like, but the futility of the venture would soon exhaust all repose and we would all be left standing proverbially with our balls hanging out.

I would assume immediately that if this is a different team then the past 38 teams the Canucks have iced, then Tony Gallagher is out of a job. And Willie Mitchell’s parade route is quickly implemented into the City’s engineering plans. And the bridge-and-tunnel carpet(douche)beggary on Granville Street is amplified 100 times.

Apart from that, we sit and wait. Hope that the thin tissues in your mouth are able to twart an attack from your teeth as you chew on your gums in rapt attention. Drink plenty of beer. Possibly abstain from coitus (or preferred form of stimulation) for 24 hour before each game. Carry gauze with you. Bring a friend.

Rhetorical question: how easy is it to lose three games in a row?

Next Up — Columbus

Articles of Intrigue — Hockey really is a rich man’s sport.