Black Ice Vancouver

“The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.”
-Lucretius

The plan was to write more about new additions, which is a thing I am having trouble with. There isn’t a whole lot to say about new additions at this point in a season, as though obviously neither of these men or the (now-injured. Fantastic. I’m blaming Sami Salo. He emits some kind of radiation, or he hit a witch with his car or something. I don’t know) new defensemen have created some hockey juggernaut in the Canucks, it’s also only 8 games in. Normally I might have some stuff to say about how a team has played, or pore through statistics on various things, but, like, here’s the thing: We kind of have to shut up for a second and give these poor fuckers a chance to do something measurable before we start your Cup party preparations or call for the head of the coach. Sure these 8 games have indicated all kinds of potential problems, but basically the most irritating thing for me as a sports fan are the articles written in the middle of a 3-game losing streak, or a player’s 6th pointless game. So, okay, I’ll write some more about the new additions.

Raffi Torres’ name is Raffi, which is great. I picture him with an afro half the time (why?) and forget about him the other, but when I do remember I can recall his days as a physical presence with occasionally soft hands, like a pre-awesome Todd Bertuzzi. He had a bad season last year, apparently has a bad attitude, and this will probably be the year that makes or breaks whether he’s seen as a difference-maker by future coaches and GMs. If you are excited about the career of Raffi Torres but haven’t really picked a side, this will be an exciting season for you.
Manny Malhotra is money in the goddamn bank so far. All I want is to see 15/16 in flashing lights over my bed, and I’m allowed to think this is significant because he kicked an equal amount of faceoff ass last year. He’s the king of the faceoff, and he’s earning every dollar they gave him. Nobody’s going to think that’s the case if he’s drawing the puck back to a team that can’t win, but you know, it’s 8 games in. At some point between Friday’s and Tuesday’s games we’ll be a 10th of the way through the season, so if the last thumping of the Wild (complete with essential contributions for the new guys) didn’t swing the old Canucks Fan pendulum back to excitement, we’ll hang Vigneault off the Georgia Viaduct. Okay?

–Clayton Pierrot

“Playing with them is like going on a double-date with Hugh Hefner. And Hef lined up the girls.” –Iain MacIntyre on how easy it is to score goals while playing with the Sedins.

There once was a blue collar man. He had a blue collar wife and a blue collar life. He worked very hard at his blue collar job in order to make provisions for his blue collar family. His blue collar family had high expectations. They depended on him. They demanded him to perform.

Every night after performing a variety of blue collar tasks he would get into his blue collar bed and make love to his blue collar wife. Every so often the blue collar man would fall asleep while making love to his blue collar wife. He would be so exhausted from living his blue collar life and providing for his blue collar family and constantly telling his blue collar wife she is not fat (she inevitably gains 10 pounds one week before she menstruates but he never says a word). He is so exhausted from reading his blue collar kids to sleep and telling them he loves them (despite the fact that one of them is her’s from a previous relationship and quite frankly he is a shitty kid with zero blue collar hope for his blue collar future).  He does his blue collar best.

The blue collar man puts up with a lot from his blue collar family and when he gets home he is blue collar tired. The blue collar man falls asleep inside his blue collar wife because he is so exhausted from his blue collar life. The blue collar wife is pissed. But she gets over it because he is a man, erections are a billion dollar-a-year industry. The end.

The moral of the story: Canucks fans are a little like that blue collar wife. One would think after this recent road trip South and a long summer of excruciating expectations (not to mention unconsumated erections), we would just let the poor man sleep.

We will be fine.

“The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. We’ll wait until we get a look at what is in the motion passed on third reading.”  –Bobby Orr

While I’ve got my derogatory nicknames  at the ready in case the big
additions to the Canucks’ defensive corps prove useless (Hamhouse, Keith
Dullard), there’s really no reason to be anything but optimistic about that
end of the ice this season. Willie Mitchell’s big smiling face will be
missed, of course, and swapping Shane O’Brien for Andrew Alberts is sure to
be a lateral move barring some big surprises, but overall, bearing in mind
the frankly weak back end the team iced at the end of last season one could
only see this summer’s acquisitions as a big step forward.

It’s clear that the demanding fans will be holding both Ballard and Hamhuis
to high standards as soon as the puck drops, and as a city we’re not known
for being fair to our hockey team, but I’m going to flip that shit around
and state unequivocally that I love them already.  Why not? They both put up
good numbers on teams with no real shot, they’re strong, young, and they
want to be here. Through the first two games they’ve shown signs of the dependability and authoritative physical presence Vancouver needs. I freely admit to an unhealthy appreciation as a fan of
players who were either ineffectual (O, Magic Mittens) or a straight-up
liability (still on your side, Brent Sopel), but I’m also a fan of
Kasparitis-quality hip-checks and good solid workhorse defense. Alberts,
since he deserves some mention, just has to be a #6. To be the supposedly
worst player on this Canucks blue line isn’t an unenviable position, with
the calibre of talent they’ve got on paper. The obvious holes in the team
have been filled, so I’m going to be a little disappointed if there isn’t
one total fuck-up in the roster just for comic relief. What I’m saying is, I
can’t say I wish him ill, but no matter how well Alberts plays I’m going to
miss Shane O’Brien.

So I’m devoting this afternoon to sitting in my underwear reading stats,
smoking cigarettes, and trying to think of *endearing* nicknames, like Beef
Ballard and The Ham Sandwich. Those really could go either way, now that I
think about it. Maybe I’m just hungry.

–Clayton Pierrot

Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World.  In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.  –Stephen Leacock

Hart Trophy winning captain? Check. 

Feisty two-way centerman? Check.

Grinding mobile defense corp? Check.

Vezina calibre goal-tending? Check. 

Shootout efficiency? Fuck.

That about says it all. Saturday night was a great night for hockey. Two great Original 14 teams starting their season off with pomp and ceremony and less then the best expectations. And unrealistic expectations are like bad opinions, every Canucks fan has one.

It wasn’t terrible, and that may be the best indictment of the team at this point in the season – not terrible.

The Sedins looked great, both leaving the game with a single point while eating up key power-play minutes. The defense was gritty and solid, much as they were billed to be.  Luongo was almost flawless, especially during a 4-on-3 penalty kill during overtime.

The best thing about the game was — with both teams wearing retro jerseys — knowing who was who on the ice. I got the goaltenders down, after that it was a crapshoot.

The only thing this team is missing is a change to the NHL rulebook abolishing the shootout. At this point, that is all the Canucks could ask for. With the talent on this team, what else is there left to ask.

“From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all.” –Albert Camus

Well I certainly tried to figured out the Canucks salary-cap high-wire act and came up with very little at the end of the day. But I tried and that is half-the battle (don’t ask about the other half of that battle, the argument is too cumbersome in-and-of itself).

Last year I had this couch. It belonged to my roommate but it was quickly co-opted by myself. It was sort of an old-lady couch with flowers — minus the plastic. I fell asleep to Sportsnet Connected every night on this couch in my clothes. I watched all the Canucks games on this couch. It was my office. My sanctuary. My home.

I recently returned home from a social-model brainwashing experiment and I have encamped at a new fixed address — and a new couch. I fell asleep on my new couch last night to the exuberant tenor of Don Taylor reading by-lines and I had a dream that my roommate’s converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses on their trip to China. I don’t know if this is some strange, convoluted foreshadowing of things to come — the Canucks don’t play until tomorrow night — but I got a strange feeling nonetheless and it hasn’t sat well with me all day.

Anyhow, I suppose that with a new couch comes new opinions. So here goes: I think letting go of Morrison is gonna sting the Canucks down the road but it won’t kill them. It will just make them stronger I suppose, whatever the hell that means (ask Nietzsche). The nostalgia factor was enticing, if not necessarily practical. On that note, I like the Peter Shaefer move. It was all economics, but perhaps he will play that Selanne roll I was talking about in my last post.

Hordichuk was done. Don’t miss him. His presence on the team was becoming moot. He was well liked in the dressing room, but magnanimity doesn’t score goals.

Claytron and I will probably miss ripping on Shane-the-big-mistake-O’Brien but he sort of ran himself out of the city. Hearing Vigneault’s gracious parting words about O’Brien yesterday on Team 1040 only cements the fact that he never really bought-in despite the Canucks’ brass giving him every opportunity.

With that said, you have to give Gillis credit for actually giving creed to his reclamation projects (despite none of them actually having worked out). He gives them all a chance, but has become unafraid to let them go if opportunities knocking fall on deaf ears (like when I’m sleeping in on Saturday morning and the JW’s come-a-preachin’ with their Chinese bibles).

Anyhow, that is about it for me right now.  Tomorrow is the big day, puck drops at 7:00 pm. All this pre-season action has tired me out.

I need a nap on my new couch.

“All my pretty ones? Did you say all? Oh hell-kite! All? What all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?” -Macbeth

The Westcoast Express.

That fabled scoring unit from a by-gone era that swept the hearts and minds of the local hockey community into a frenzy for three-and-a-half seasons. Then it all came crashing to a halt. At one fell swoop Todd Bertuzzi ripped a sucker punch so deep into the back of Steve Moore’s cranium that even those hipsters on the tilt in Crab Park took notice. The most potent scoring trio (including Markus Naslund) in Vancouver history was reduced to rubble. Expectation for the team and the city vanished. The collective wisdom that dark and stormy March evening was things would never be the same.

It was a train-wreck of myopic proportions.

Brendan Morrison was always the unsung hero of the WestCoast Express. He played between the machismo rage of Todd Bertuzzi and the European gentility of Markus Naslund. He was the scale in the balance of power on a line combination that dominated the NHL . Between Naslund’s sensitive wrist shot and Bertuzzi’s blind ferocity was Brendan Morrison, the consummate hockey statesman, Northern gentleman and local boy.

Morrison never had had history on his side. His work ethics was great, but his heroics in game-six against Calgary in 2004 were undermined by Bertuzzi’s suspension and Naslunds no-show in the series. The sensitive Swede and the primal-ape from Sudbury with the soft-hands were always over-shadowing Morrison’s contributions.

At one point the NHL’s leading iron man, Morrison has run into injury trouble the past few years and at the ripe age of 35 he has become expendable. In the age of salary cap and building a team from the middle out, the diminutive forwards prospects are slipping. Once guaranteed a job centering either the first or second line on any NHL team, Morrison has been squeezed out by a new crop of rookies and the new economics of professional hockey which has become a sport in and of itself.

Now he is back in Vancouver. Fighting for a roster spot on a professional tryout. Herded like chattel, waiting to hear about his future. Morrison, the consummate hockey statesmen has the opportunity to do what neither Bertuzzi or Naslund had the balls to do. He has a chance to lead Vancouver to a Stanley Cup.

If he makes the team, and I think he should. It could be akin to Teemu Selanne rejoining the Anaheim Ducks the season they won the Cup. The Canucks have everything they need to a win it all. But they need an X-factor now. A certain je ne said quoi? Something to puts them over the edge. It is in the opinion of this humble correspondent that that very well could be Brendan Morrison.

If the Canucks let him.

But O heart! Heart! Heart! O the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead –Walt Whitman (O Captain, My Captain).

It seemed like a good idea, two summers ago, when Mike Gillis and Alain Vignault conspired to name Luongo the 12th captain of the Vancouver Canucks.

After losing to the Chicago Blackhawks two years in a row, it seemed like a bad idea. Everyone knew it. Gillis acknowledge last week that it was a distraction and it would be addressed. It was.

Loungo relinquished his captaincy today in a press conference.

End of story.

It was a failed experiment, but one commenced by Gillis in the spirit of diplomacy. At the time he needed to lock of Luongo to a long term deal and he knew waving the “C” under the Montreal natives nose might entice him to sign. It worked.

But it was ridiculous. It felt awkward. It looked awkward. It was a necessary evil at the time. But is was evil nonetheless and a brilliant move by Gillis to lock up Luongo. While the 12-year contract may come back to bite the Canucks in the ass, especially since the minimization of the goaltending position in the playoffs (see: Chicago) in recent years, is also solidifies the back end for a while (or until Luongo shits the bed this year in the playoffs).

What I noticed the most during Luongo’s captain years is a real lack of identity for the team. In Luongo’s early years, the team was known for it’s defence-first system. After missing the playoffs in his second year here and a regime change the Gillis-era rung in a new, offensive minded system that earned the team back-to-back divisional titles but subsequent failure in the playoffs earned little for Luongo’s confidence and trust in his leadership began to slid.

So that is that. We need a fearless leader. I dunno. It’s probably going to be the Sedins. Most likely Henrik.

Did you know that Don Cherry played 33 games for the Vancouver Canucks in 1969 when the team was still in the WHL? Well now you do. And I don’t know, and don’t really care who will be captain. I wish it was Ryan Kesler but it won’t be. It’s gonna be Henrik. It has to be.

End of story.

Good article by Brad Zeimer on his blog regarding the Luongo captaincy. I don’t think he is alone. Perhaps Gillis used the captaincy issue as leverage to get Luongo to commit to a long-term deal. If that is the case — mission accomplished. Now let’s get a real captain.

Read Zeimers take here:

http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/puckworld/archive/2010/08/23/this-is-your-former-captain-speaking.aspx

In other news. Apparently Brain Burke is pissed at the signing of Bill Sweatt last week by Gillis. Toronto won the rights to the talented college winger last month but couldn’t sign him. He is projected to play in the same vein as Mason Raymond.

Look for Gillis to continue to plug holes with the departure of Grabner and Bernier last month. For every bad move Gillis makes, he makes at least two good ones. I think the Sweatt Brothers will mark an impact on depth that the Canucks have been lacking in a while.

Talk Soon

It was announced that the naming rights for GM Place have been purchased by Rogers, the Canucks will now be playing at the newly christened Rogers Arena. Blah, Blah, Blah. I actually sort of, kind of liked GM Place (sorry Naomi Klein), but I’m sure I’ll adjust. I’m not as attached as Torontonians were to their beloved SkyDome. Alas, the winds of change are blowing.

In other news of relative consequence, the Canucks announced this week that assistance coach Ryan Walter got the pink slip and will be replaced by Newell Brown.

(Could it have something to do with this?)

I’m all for a little coaching shake up, especially something that could bring a little consistency to a flaccid penalty kill (18th overall last year) and a bullshit goals-against (20th overall). Whether this falls under Browns jurisdiction isn’t known yet. If MG has any foresight he will keep the coaching staff on a short leash this year as the expectations on this nucleus run pretty high. Given the fire-sale of key support players in Chicago this summer you gotta wonder if the Canucks main arch-rival this year may be simply themselves.

In other news, word on the street is that Canucks brass have a few moves up their sleeve that may be exercized in the coming weeks. MG has been making little moves like signing Lee Sweattin May that could have huge upswing for a team aching for a bonafide support cast. The talent on this roster is indisputable, but this talent needs a figurative vitamin-E shot in the guise of a dark-horse-blue chip or Cody Hodgson. That might be enough to put em over the top.

It was announced the other day that long time Canucks radio color-commentator, Tom Larscheid, would retire. He will be replaced by Deutsche Eishockey Liga stalwart, Dave Tomlinson. There seems to be evidence that Larscheid was given the slip for a younger, prettier (imagine Tomlinson’s blue eyes piercing through your radio) model.

Larscheid was a goof, albeit a loveable one. Tomlinson may be Ferraro-lite, but he still has this up on the former Whale:

The former Alder Mannheim Eagle frozen in time right before he is sent to Germany.

He won a number of championships and accolades during his hockey career in Europe, but you know that in his heart-of-hearts he was thinking the whole time, “one day I’m gonna go home, usurp a local media legend, then call the color on local radio when the hometeam wins a Stanley Cup in their 40th season in the NHL.” It brings a new meaning to hockey cliche No. 36 – great vision for the ice.

Larchaid had a fine run and some memorable quotes and antics and but he was just another cog in the loser wheel this city has been spinning for a  long time. Out with the old and in with the…let’s see those retro jerseys again:

Okay, now I have the metaphysical grip to win a Stanley Cup.

Oh, and who gives a holy shit who calls the shots when/if the Canucks ever manage to win. They win. Right? So fuck you bloggers, eh. I’m tired and I’m now going to bed.