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.

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

I went and saw Inception yesterday and it has been knawing at my craw all day what it might take to break into the sub-concious of the Vancouver fanbase and plant a seed. THIS IS OUR YEAR VANCOUVER. The writing is on the wall. We got a Hart Trophy winner, 20-goal scorers coming our unholy openings and we got depth, DEPTH, down the middle (should Cody Hodgson take flight the plot bifurcates).

Raymond got his term and management got their money, so there is one more piece in an ever expanding arsenal. What else can an anorexic fan ask for? What more does one need?

Vancouver for so long has been hampered by a civic-wide parasite of negative self-talk. THEY’RE A BUNCH OF BUMS. LUONGO SUCKS. BURE IS GAY. Call it, the curse of Cyclone Taylor or the curse of the Denman Arena. Call it whatever. The fact is, every time “this is the year,” the team in question 1981, 1994, 2003, 2010 stumbles at some point in the post-season and the collective fan base loses confidence. Then, like a line of parasitic dominoes, the entire team loses their collective shit.

So getting back to Inception. What we need this year is a mantra: THIS IS OUR YEAR. We cannot waver from this accord. Ideas are too powerful, too dangerous if used incorrectly in this age.

The curious case of Sami Salo has turned what was once a head-scratching, head-shaking, WTF moment, into a casual understanding that the Fragile Finn has nothing less then a glass jaw. At some point in the season commentators will miss him because of a dip in numbers from the defence. This will pass.

There is no feeling so bad that it will not pass eventually.

Salo will be missed but he must be sent to the Albatross graveyard in the sky. His presence, much like Nathan LaFayette’s goal-post in ‘94, is far too much for the the fragile psyche of this city to handle.

In the interim let it be of comfort that MG has assemble THE TEAM and this is THE YEAR. Quite frankly because this is THE WINDOW.

If the Canucks don’t accomplish in the next two years what they are capable of doing than they can have another curse to draw on. One of a strange Finnish man who came all the way to Canada to gain his soul through hockey, but somehow lost his body in the process.