The Downward Spiral that is the Vancouver Canucks

It's been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs this season for the Vancouver Canucks. This stretch run of a four game losing streak could not come at a worse time. How did we get here?

The glaring holes in our defense has been made very apparent recently, as our division rivals are all gunning for the playoffs playing their best hockey of the year.

And why do we have these holes you ask? In Mirtle's blog he once posted about the amount of man games lost to injury, that's a pretty good answer in this case. I don't have the total numbers but I believe within the Northwest Division we have the most injuries on the blue line. We lost Salo and Bieksa early in the season, but we rallied from that and arguably played our best stretch of hockey in November.

Then we got Salo back and lost him again. He came back later and has his flashes of brilliance every so often, but I don't think we've seen a comfortable 100% injury free Salo this season.

Then we lost Krajicek.

Then we lost Mitchell for an extended period.

Then we lost Ohlund for the rest of the season.

I think you see the trend. On the bright side, we've seen the rise of Alex Edler, albeit lately I think the huge minutes are starting to wear on him.

So defensive woes are apparent. We also have offensive woes, rather than offensive "whoas" as well.

We lost Morrison earlier in the season to a wrist injury. Then we got him back, and our offense looked somewhat stabilized.

Then guess what happened? Torn ACL.

Our Iron Man ain't so iron no more.

We saw the rise of a promising young Mason Raymond as well. He's on the shelf too after a knee on knee against a Phoenix Coyotes player.

So to recap injuries have plagued us. But as many hockey teams state that is no excuse, and it really isn't. It's disappointing but as a fan I wouldn't care so much if I saw some more effort.

But lately it's like the Canucks are bipolar. They're as wishy washy as most of the bandwagon jumping fans here in Vancouver.

As Naslund likes to say, "choked". Yup. We're choking down the stretch. A week ago we were in contention for the Division title. Now we're in danger of missing the playoffs. We're tied with Nashville today with 86 points, but by virtue of the tie breaker they're in 8th. So with five games left, we don't even control our own destiny.

If they run the table they're in. If we run the table, we have to hope that someone comes along and plays spoiler.

Even if we make the playoffs we're squeaking in by the skin of our teeth. Then what? Bounced in the first round?

With the effort we've seen lately... absolutely. Remember last year?



I'm a Canucks fan through and through, but I'm also a hockey fan. And as a hockey fan, I don't want to see us make the playoffs because we don't deserve to make the playoffs. There are no more excuses to be made. I see it in the players and it's sad, they look defeated.

My mom once said that GM Place is cursed because it has bad Feng Shui. I think I'm starting to believe her.

But I don't want to end on a downer. So lets look at the positives.

We have a big off season ahead of us. Nonis has a lot of work to do. I'll touch more on this in a future post.

For the most part, I applaud Dave Nonis for the way he's handled the team this year. He couldn't have predicted the injury plague we've been hit with. He really should have addressed some of the secondary scoring issues last year, but his hands were tied a bit with the cap space and he wanted to leave room for the deadline.

I'm also extremely happy we didn't sell the farm for a Brad Richards at the deadline. For those of you who knock Nonis for having no balls, the ballsiest move he made at the deadline was doing nothing.

Where we need to improve is in our scouting. We need to draft better. I can't state this enough.
In the last few years we've found a few gems in the 2nd rounds or later, but we've also passed on some serious talent in our draft history. In this era of the NHL you need youth to chip in at a lower salary range if you want a chance to win a Stanley Cup.

I look forward to the off season for a chance to refresh our team and really prove to Luongo and our other heart and soul players that we are committed to winning. This year had its lowlights but also some highlights as well.

Our youth is on the rise. We finally have some talent in the system which we shouldn't rush. Let them develop properly. Do you want to turn out like the Toronto Maple Leafs?

The rise of the youth on this team is encouraging. Kesler, Burrows, Edler, Raymond and Shannon will start to shift towards the core of the team. Our current core players will add veteran experience.

It's been a doozy of a post. My boss at work told me that the other posts were short. So K, here you go it's a longer one for you.

The Standings

ESPN has a cool new widget here.

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!"

Tribute to Jarkko Ruutu: My Top 10 favourite Ruutu moments!

Well one of my favourite former Canucks had a big night. A goal and 2 assists. Not bad, not bad at all. I'm sure he's one of the most annoying guys to play against. After all he's always got that smirk on his face sticking out his tongue.

Gotta love the Finnish grit.

They're really like the toughest Europeans. I'm sure he grew up idolizing Essa Tikkanen. For all the skill the Swedes have the Finns have grit and toughness. Ruutu is a fan favourite wherever he goes. He's the player you hate but would love to have on your team.

Ruutu's Career NHL totals:

414 Games
35 Goals
45 Assists
80 Points
and drum roll please...
a whopping 702 Penalty minutes.

So without further ado here are my top 10 Favourite Jarkko Ruutu Moments:




Ruutu handles Rob Blake really well considering he would be fighting outside his weight class.




Ruutu drops F-bombs on the TSN broadcast. He leans over the suicide box in between the benches where Pierre Macguire sits and beaks off at the Montreal bench. They have to kill Pierre's microphone during the play by play because of Ruutu. Priceless.






Jarkko Ruutu outsmarts Dion Phaneuf. He checks him hard pushes his buttons gets him to drop the gloves and slew foots him. Then saunters off to the bench. Brilliant.

Ruutu rocks the "Finnglish" as he throws haymakers against Ben Ondrus. Good solid fight. Shows he dish it out pretty good and is not just a "cheap shot artist".







Ruutu goes toe to toe with Darcy Tucker. Note the Punch counter.






One of his 2 staple shootout moves. Except this one is done on the most exciting play in the game. A penalty shot.





Here's his other shootout move. The slowmotion one hander.







Here's his first shootout move at full speed going top-shelf - where Mama hides the cookie jar!





Ruutu serves up the Subway sandwich of the game. Eat your heart out Jared!







And finally Ruutu has his own theme song. It really doesn't get much better than that.





So number 37 left quite an impression on me. He was a fun player to watch and cheer for. We even made up a game, which was really Marco Polo replaced by the words Jarkko Ruutu. One group of fans would call out "Jarkko" when he laid out a hit and the other fans would reply "Ruutu". Ahhh... the fond memories of a previous Canuck.

Give the Jack Adams to Jules Winfield

I'm hear all this stuff about old time hockey, and how this new NHL is nothing like how the game used to be played. So they really must mean hockey the Samuel L. Jackson way.

I'd love to see Ron Maclean add him to the Think Hockey segments. Imagine Samuel L. Jackson showing Ron and kids the "gourmet shot", "inglewood jack" and teaching them to be bad mother@#$%ers.