Black Ice Vancouver

“Just another day in medical hell for the Vancouver Canucks.” Elliot Pap on Vancouver’s mounting injury woes.

After suffering not one but two cataclysmic Halloween hangovers over the weekend at the hands of my amoral troupe of friends, it was only possible to witness the Canucks play the Aves the old-fashioned way — laying on my bed with a naked girl, eating Chinese food and listening to the game on the radio.

Fuck pay-per-view for this many reasons:

1) The god-awful Canucks TV segments featuring Dan “Smurf” Murphy. The one reason the Canucks continue to employ this faux-hawked midget must be due to some inside-joke nepotism that clearly assumes the team brass.

Sort of hockey’s equivalent of the village idiot, every town has one, or some other Goldberg variation therein.

I would be compelled to feel sorry for Smurf, however, my aforementioned hangover dictates the most lethal of attitude toward everything small and wimp-like.

Besides, throwing shit at the radio is way cheaper in the long-haul then if I ever get off my ass and buy a digital cable box.

2) God-awful digital cable boxes. If you don’t have one of these little faggots then you have to sit in a Vancouver sports bar (or your equivalent substitute for hell) and watch Smurf and Co. along with the hoi polloi from hell (i.e. Vancouver hockey fans).

Avoiding the pay-per-view Ponzi scheme is something I consider to be a civic duty. While Shorthouse and Garret do the call (and Shorty is the best behind Jim Hughson), it’s all  that surrounding clap-trap the broadcast provides which sends me into hallucinations of competing irritations.

Apart from listening by the fire in the comfort of your own living room, the next best thing I suggest is watching the game at the peeler bar.

3) Paying to watch a god-awful team (purported to be a contending team) playing a contending team (purported to be god-awful).

Now to the Canucks faithful, annual crushing disappointment is paramount. The season of 2009-10 is no different, pegged by pundits to finish top five in the league, the Canucks are off to an acceptable 8-7-0 start. The injury problems facing the team have been no secret and the high expectations for Vancouver (and Calgary) seem to have allowed Colorado to slip under the radar and start the year with an eye-jerking 10-2-2 record.

So while the Canucks could very well manage a respectable run in the near future, the parity of the league in the modern NHL allows devastating upsets to abound.

Two years ago the Canucks made a similar start to the season, went on a decent run in February and then missed the playoff by one point in April, simply by not winning against teams like the Avalanche.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they did beat the Aves, I fell asleep in the comfort of my own intoxication.

Alas.

Next Up – New York

How bad can it get?

A 2-0 lead in the first period turned into a 7-2 route by the Anaheim Ducks as Vancouver coughed up an early advantage on a balmy evening in Orange County.

What started out as decent, turned into to pre-Halloween nightmare for the .500 Vancouver squad.

The Canucks started strong getting two quick goals in the first, trying to take advantage of a Ducks team that hasn’t won at home in five games.

After that it was all Duck. Giving up seven unanswered goals to a famished Anaheim squad that took advantage of a Canucks team that is missing five regular forwards and their star-goaltender.

The anemic Perry-Getzlaf-Ryan line finally got a chance to juke their stats, earning a combined eight points on the night and steering their own ship out of trouble, all-the-while watching Vancouver struggle to wade above their own .500 mark.

It seems like Vancouver, after gaining lead, forgot about their own scoring woes (remember all those forward out with injury) and gave the Ducks every chance available to get on the board, thereby sending Vancouver back north with a two-game road split.

A certain degree of hubris set in after getting the early lead, this helped the Ducks dictate the rest of the game.

Again I ask, can it get any worse?

It could, but for the Canucks what is worse then terrible is mediocrity. Unfortunately it is the mediocrity that Vancouver has excelled at for so long that makes them doomed to saddle themselves in defeat for many years to come.

To Vancouver, worst is not bad, and that sucks.

Next Up – Colorado