Black Ice Vancouver

“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.