Black Ice Vancouver

The Vancouver Canucks played their best and worst hockey of the season on this past road swing through the Eastern Conference. With there best hockey they seemed to lose the game and with their bad hockey they seemed to win.

New Jersey

The much ballyhooed rivalry between Brodeur and Luongo never really paid off in this game.  The two prides of St. Leonard, Montreal seemed to be playing opposite games. Luongo was sharp but still seemed to let in a softie. Brodeur was limp, never really recuperating from and embarrassing goal off Daniel Sedin.

Brodeur has excelled in a backwater NHL market with little fanfare, but his numbers and hardware are impressive. Luongo on the other hand honed his craft in the swamps of Florida but has put is money where his mouth is by committing to win a championship in Vancouver.

Luongo has taken more of a risk if you ask me. The goalie with biggest balls ought to be Steve Yzerman’s only criteria for choosing goalies for 2010.

Philadelphia Flyers

Vancouver has not has much success with the Flyers the past few years, but they came to play against a team that did not. Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were not the threat they were suppose to be. Phillies best player, Arron Asham, was stoned by our best player, Roberto Luono.

Vancouver is lucky, they caught a good team on the decline. The Flyers will clean up their act. After the Vancouver game they fired coach John Stevens and replaced him with the proven Peter Laviolette–known to squeeze a little blood from stone in the past.

At the beginning I had chosen a Canucks/Flyers final. Will Phillie pull a Pittsburgh this year?

Carolina Hurricanes

It makes sense in retrospect that Vancouver lost this game, but you never want to see them lose in Vagina-jersey town. Not now not ever. They still need to pick up the pace on their road-game that is why I will say that a 2-2 road-trip at this point is actually an improvement.

Nashville Predators

Vancouver could not get anything going from the opening faceoff. They always seemed a step behind the play and every tiny mistake they made turned into a goal for Nashville. Like with Carolina, it’s hard to see a good team beat a bad team, but in both of these cases you can’t fault a bad team from playing well. And in both cases that is exactly what happened.

It was a weird trip, one I’m sure the Canucks are happy is over. Now back to business at home.

Next Up – Atlanta