Canucks Douse Flames 6-2

I've been waiting all day to write this post. I was at the Foo Fighters concert last night, (which was awesome by the way) so I didn't get to watch the game live. However, I did PVR it. Man, am I glad I did. What a great game to watch.

Why can't we see an effort like that every night?

The Canucks Doused the Flames 6-2. Couldn't they have spread around the scoring a little bit? We could use some of those goals in the next few games...

Last night was a solid 40 minute game from every player on our squad. The first period was iffy. We were lucky to get out of it tied, but in the end I got to see some flashes of brilliance from our veteran leaders.

Last night Naslund played like a captain. He lead by example, he threw hits, hustled, and backchecked hard. He showed a level of determination and fire that I didn't think he had anymore. I want to see more. He was like the Naslund of old, but much more defensively responsible. To me, his goal at the end of the first sparked the team. Naslund was hungry for the net and dove to stuff that puck in as everybody crashed the net. That's the kind of goal you want your captain to score. It let them go into the intermission tied and not down. They were allowed to start fresh. My favourite Naslund moment last night was when Lombardi had a break to the net and Naslund backchecked and caught up to him and stripped him of the puck. There's very few people with the wheels to keep up with Lombardi, but Naslund did somehow.

Trevor Linden. Need I say more? He was fabulous. If he had gotten the hat trick the roof would have blown off GM place. The first goal was all patience and poise. Also it all happened because of an unbelievable play made by Ritchie to get him the puck, as he knocked the puck out of the air and laid a sneaky saucer pass right on Linden's stick. His second goal was just good positioning. Linden still and always will be my favourite Canuck.

I could rave on and on but my hat goes off to the entire team. Lou played great. Isbister, Pettinger, Cowan, all the role players played hard and battled like a hungry team. They got under Iginla's skin and capitalized on a Flames team that was down two key centers, Langkow and Conroy.

It's encouraging to see an effort put forth by your home team like that. But can we expect to see this on a regular basis? With Nashville losing to Detroit last night destiny is back in our hands. We need to run the table. Win and we're in.

I swear it's like they read my previous post and decided to prove me wrong. For the record, I'd be okay with that. I'm expecting good things. Hell I'm going to the game on Thursday, I better see good things. A Linden hat trick would make me happy.

In case you missed the game. Which was a hell of game, here are the highlights:

Around the League in 80 seconds

First of all congratulations are in order to Roberto Luongo. He is the proud father of a baby girl, Gabriella Luongo. It's a joyous occasion for the Luongo family so my best wishes go out to all of you.

Luongo is quite the trooper, he's racked up some serious frequent flier miles in the last few days. He took a red eye from Colorado to Florida. Made it there for the birth of his baby daughter and was off to Minnesota the next day to make the start earlier tonight. Too bad the end result wasn't great but I'm not going to blame him for the loss. We'll leave that for a future posting...

Next up, we have the never ending Bertuzzi/Moore saga continues.

It takes a twist today however, Mark Crawford has now been named in the lawsuit.

Bertuzzi sought to have Crawford included based on the claim that his NHL contract compelled him take orders from his coach.

"It was a term and condition of Bertuzzi's employment with the Vancouver hockey club that he was to take direction from Crawford in all matters related to his role or function as a player," court documents state.

After this I have no doubt in my mind that Bertuzzi and Crow will now continue their hate-hate relationship. Old habits die hard.Frankly, I'm sick of it. Sort it out amongst yourselves, I don't want to hear about it anymore. You're all to blame. To quote Newton, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".Moore shouldn't have taken a run at Naslund. Moore should have just simply fought Bertuzzi that night and gotten it over with. Bertuzzi was equally responsible for stalking Moore and Crawford is claimed by a few to have told his troops to make Moore "pay the price".

Bertuzzi has filed a "cross claim" that if legal damages in the $37 million civil suit are awarded, the Canucks should have to pay, the Toronto Star reports. The team, meanwhile, has filed a similar suit against Bertuzzi.

This lawsuit is like the freakin' energizer bunny. They need to settle it. I'm sure there's nothing the NHL would like better than to sweep this scandal under the rug. The game has enough image issues in the US, and I'm sure the Chris Simon incidents didn't help this year either. It's pretty much a PR nightmare.

Next.

Torts named US National team coach.

Good for him. I'm not really a big fan of his but you can't really knock a Stanley Cup winning coach too much I guess. However, he's the winningest American born NHL coach, so it only really makes sense.

If there's a goalie controversy to be had this spring on team USA expect old Johnny boy here to be stirring it up.

To me he's like the American version of Mike Keenan. Come to think of it, if his hair thins out more he really would look like Keenan. They have the same iron fist mentality that doesn't always bode well with his players. They have a winning reputation that slowly erodes and then slaps them with a "reputation". We'll see if Torts lasts another season in Tampa.

So that effectively rounds up the news to share with you. I was ultra disappointed with the Canucks game again (hmmmm...... deja vu) as it's definitely coming unraveled here in Vancity. I'll touch more on that this weekend.

Hopefully it only took you 80 seconds to read this otherwise my clever blog title is not so clever or relevant for that matter. So as Billy Madison says to the fat kid in Mrs. Vaughn's class... "Tuh-Tuh-Today Junior!"