Sports Fandom is a Breeding Ground for Irrational Thought

I've been meaning to write about hockey in general, and the Canucks specifically for about two months now. Obviously it hasn't happened yet until today.

It has been a crazy few years to be a Canucks fan and its kind of hard at the moment to not think that this past weekend had to be the turning point one way or the other - and its kind of hard to imagine the good version, but I'm going to try.

I'll be the first to admit that my view of my team is perpetually rosy, and that by many measures it is hard to see an argument that justifies that position.  But I also try to be level headed and rational - which is something that if you read much fan commentary is a very spare commodity.

Pulling just a few comments that I've read just this morning:

 - "Luongo is a terrible goalie and has nothing to show for it."
Dubious grammar aside.  This one is just flat out wrong.  Hockey-reference.com as of this writing has Luongo ranked as #25 of all-time. His GAA is in the top third of active goalies. He is #2 of all active goaltenders in shut-outs (of course Brodeur is #1 and has nearly twice the number of SOs.) which isn't so much a measure of current quality, but you don't reach that point without a heap of talent. He is also second in wins (again Brodeur - arguably the greatest goaltender to ever live - is first.) His save percentage - third.
I'm sorry - no, I take that back... "Luongo is a terrible goalie" is such an asinine statement that I have nothing to be sorry for when I say that anyone who says that is egregiously wrong.
As to the second half - "has nothing to show for it."  Again, this is wrong.  If the commenter wants to amend that to "has no Stanley Cup to show for it" - which does seem to be the subtext of most comments along this line - then they are correct.  But that is not what they wrote.  Luongo has a Jennings trophy.  The Canucks won two President's Trophies with him in the pipes as well as winning the Western Conference finals once and topping their division every year since 2009.
And of course at the 2010 Oly...
The commenter continues: "You can't count the gold medal."
Uh.... why not?  Because it is the biggest single piece of evidence disproving your claim that he has nothing to show for it?  I suspect that yes, that is the reason for the commenter's cherry-picking of facts.  But the reasons they present are that 1) "its not the NHL"; and 2) "he let in a clunky goal at the end of the third requiring the Canadian team to win in OT."  My short hand argument to both assertions is "so fucking what?" But in the interest of rational discourse I shall elaborate.  1) The discussion is whether Luongo is a terrible goalie or not. Under which umbrella he is a good (or great) goal-tender has nothing to do with the overall question.  Eliminating the data of the olympics is like ignoring the results of one scientific study over another - simply because you don't agree with the results of the one you are discounting.  2) I don't recall anywhere in any hockey rule-book there being a rule about how almost losing is the same as losing.  I've said it a million times it seems, but the goalie's job is to stop one more puck than his competitor at the opposite end of the rink.  If he does better than that, great.  Other than that it doesn't matter when, where or how.
As to "clunky?" There is a heap of traffic in front of that net, including two US players behind the Canadian defense.

The entire argument also wilfully ignores the game-saving stops Luongo did make in the contest - including a doozy in the extra period.

None of this means that I don't think Luongo has his issues. He has shown a propensity for emotional fragility. He has blown more high-pressure games than he has won (but the reality is that in any given year 29 of the teams in the league do so). He did stink up one too many games in the 2011 Stanley Cup final. But he was also brilliant in that series too.  Only two goaltenders have ever posted two shutouts in a Cup final series.  Luongo and Tim Thomas - both in the same series.  Overall, he did fail the "stop one more goal than your rival" test in the final.  But he got us to that final, and the other side of the coin, in order to "stop one more goal than your rival" your team has to score - and that was something that the skaters largely failed at in the games the Canucks lost in that series (game six is the only game that really could have been saved by better goal-tending if you really want to be honest about it.)  For that matter, if you look at the four games of the 2013 first round sweep of the Canucks by the Sharks, Luongo was the better goalie in the playoffs, and in the games he played was actually the best player on the ice for the Canucks.  Yes, it was a sweep.  But most of those games were a lot closer than the series outcome implies.  I'm not going to break it down, but no less than two of those games were lost to either a bad play by Canucks skaters or unbelievably bad calls by the officials.  No reason to make the goalies the scapegoats - or worse yet, make one goalie a scapegoat for circumstances outside of their control, but not do the same for the other.

 - "The Canucks will never win the Cup because they've never won the Cup."
Where do you start with this one?  There is no causal relationship here.  Yet, this statement and similar sentiments are remarkably common.  "The Canucks suck because they have never won the Cup."  Uh... what?  I would love for the Canucks to win the Stanley Cup - and I have total faith that they will some day - but "they suck because they have never won the Cup" can only be one of two things.  Trolling, or a pretty astounding lack of appreciation for the actual game.  A lot of great teams have failed to win the cup in any given year.  There is ALWAYS more than one worthy team in the playoffs, but only one ever hoists the hardware.  The Canucks have been a pretty great team for most of the last dozen years, and it really sucks that they haven't managed to go all the way in that time (or ever), but that doesn't actually make them a bad team. (Not to beat a dead-horse, but if it DID mean they were a bad team, then conversely there would only ever be one good team int he league in any given season.)  Statistically speaking they are behind the curve.  42 years in a league with 14-30 teams, they ought to have won the Cup by now.  But you can say the same for Buffalo who entered the league the same year and have only made it to the final once. Worse yet, you can say the same of St. Louis who had an extra three years, made it to the Cup finals each of their first three years (due to the NHL equivalent of affirmative action - where the playoffs set the expansion teams against the O6 teams, so one expansion team was destined to play in the final) and have not come closer than the conference finals (twice) in the 42 years since.

- "The Devils become an instant contender with Schneider."
Wow.  This HAS to be a poe.  HAS TO BE.
You almost have to know absolutely nothing about hockey to say something this dumb. In fact, if you've bothered to read this far, I probably don't even have to explain how barking this is.  But in a sentence... Martin Brodeur (arguably the best goalie of all-time - see above) has been between the pipes for NJ forever, winning two Cups and taking the team to the final two other times - INCLUDING LAST YEAR.
Schneider will be good for the Devils' future, 'cause Marty is going to wake up one day in the next 24 months and very suddenly have become a mortal being. Quality tends to turn over fast for goalies.  Schneider will be there to catch the team when Brodeur hangs up his jersey, but he isn't making them a contender.

And so it seems I have inadvertently transitioned into the Schneider trade...

I was as shocked as anyone.

Disappointed even.

But upon sober reflection, I don't think there was another way.
I (obviously) am a Luongo proponent, but when Cory took over in the 2012 LA/Van series I "knew" it was over, and thought that for the good of all, that it should be. Luongo would be better off being moved, the team would have a change that could be mentally circled around for a morale boost, and the PR nightmare would be done once and for all.
Fast forward to the 2013 entry draft.... oh, boy....
After a year of not being able to move Luongo, and all the kudos that went to both net-minders for handling the situation well, who gets moved? Schneider.  And though there are folks like me who still love Luongo for being the best goaltender the Canucks have ever had (go ahead, make an argument against that - the statistics say you are wrong) I knew that if I felt, at best, mixed, that the majority of Canucks fans - who are largely Canucks fans, not hockey fans, if you get the distinction - would be anywhere from alienated to outraged.  I find it agonizing that in this market that public opinion has as much sway on hockey decisions as it does.  It has to.  I understand that.  I'm also relieved that Canucks brass has the cajones to stand against it as much as they do - but it is a balancing act.  And this Jenga tower has tumbled.

But here's the thing... there was no other way.  That sucks.  But that's the way it is.

It comes down to Luongo's contract.  That record-breaking, rule-bending, precedent-setting contract.  There was some genius in it when it was signed. The way it creatively accounted its way around salary-cap issues... fucking brilliant.  And that is why it was the template for a schwack of contracts around the league that followed it.  But it bit back.  It made Luongo un-tradeable.  That is self-evident now.  If Luongo could have been traded, he would have been traded by the deadline last year, and if there was any doubt about that then, it is abundantly clear now.
So what options did we have with goalie-gate?
Not many.
1) Compliance buy-out on Luongo and send him on his way for nothing.  Less than nothing. It would cost them 13.5 million dollars just to say goodbye.
2) Keep both. Ha ha. Right.One short season of that worked better than it should have, but the cap-hit alone simply won't stand.
3) Renegotiate Luongo's contract downwards. Not actually an option. The NHLPA would set fire to Rogers Arena.
4) Trade Schneider.

Realistically there are only two options there. #1 and #4. Both were going to be PR nightmares.
Of course we ALL know better than Mike Gillis - just read the comments online, its apparent that anyone who has been watching 2 games a week plus playoffs for 25 years knows more about hockey than a guy who has spent his life in the business and lives and breathes the behind the scenes details of his team that we will never see. Just ask any of them. They all think Gillis is an idiot.
I do think Gillis is on shaky ground. He has one season, I figure, to do something to change the state of the team - and more power to him, he is giving it all he's got.
I'm not confident that trading the younger, still improving, cheaper goalie was the better choice, but I don't think the other option was clearly a better option.  At least this way the team got something back.  A lot of the grumbling seems to stem from a fiction that there was another option - trading Luongo. And that, as I've already pointed out, was clearly not in the cards.
The next tier of dissent among fans is that assuming Schneider had to go, that we didn't get enough in return.  On the surface it certainly feels that way, doesn't it?  Schneider is exactly what New Jersey needs for their future and they got him for a first round draft-pick who may never wear an NHL jersey.  But the question is not "what is Schneider worth in trade?" The question is "what could we get for him when the moment Gillis mentions him in a trade discussion it confirms what every GM in the league ought to already know - that they have Gillis over a barrel?"  He was doomed to get screwed. It would have been nice to get a roster player in the trade, and I think that in most other circumstances that would have been warranted.
Bo Horvat, the player we got with our pick looks promising. Hes an OHL MVP and as close to a lock for the NHL as the average first rounder gets. The beauty of being 9th is that you aren't first. There is all kinds of room for disappointment in those first picks.  The focus on the top three or so picks is usually unrealistically high, setting up a failure to meet expectations. Drop down a few rungs and there is room to exceed.  The jury is out and will be for at least the season or two it takes for Horvat to get into the league, but he has the all the boxes ticked for a player who could be the future of a team.  With all the talk about how our present is slipping away, this isn't a hollow move for the organization.

Speaking of the future...
What is Luongo's future?
He has few options right now. He can take the path of least resistance (at least professionally, I'm of the understanding that his wife has never supported Vancouver, and for all practical purposes has never lived here... gee thanks, Honey. Perhaps we shouldn't be vilifying Roberto for his emotional fragility and looking at his support network.) and commit to Vancouver with all that he's got. That is what management expects.  Or he could retire. Heh.  Or he could refuse to report to training camp.  Its not out of the realm of possibility.  At this point if he feels fucked over, that is his deserved right.  But at the same time, he did make this bed himself by agreeing to the contract that has caused the issue.  If Luongo doesn't play in Vancouver - either by retiring (simply not going to happen yet) or by refusing to report - then we are hooped.  That is a reality that the fans need to embrace and accept.  And that means getting behind Luongo, making him feel welcome and appreciated.  We need to encourage him to be the goalie of his resume, not the goalie of his reputation.
At 34 he is getting close, if not past, the point where goal-tenders start to decline, but the good news is that it is very common for the tail of an elite goalie's career to be quite long.  Take Brodeur as an example for the umpteenth time in this post.  Luongo could easily have another 5 or 6 years as one of the best goal-tenders in the league, and it is not out of the question that he could still make an argument for being the best active goalie in the next few seasons.  His contract was built with exactly that possibility in mind. He will still be being paid more than his actual cap-hit for another five years - that is a plus of sorts, albeit one that wouldn't be relevant with a different contract.  Luongo could still be the player he is expected to be.  Many a player has been less than their perceived legend until they've won a Cup (Yzerman springs to mind.) and many many great and beloved players have never won cups at all.  We have no choice now but to hope he is the former, not the latter.  Accept it and get with the program, 'cause he will be a better player with our support than without it.

Think of all the money that will be saved now that this doesn't have to be removed from the arena.

I can hardly believe I've made it this far without mentioning the name John Tortorella.
Two days ago it was a subject that would have been the bulk of this post.

My short-form opinion is that I am not pleased with the match.  I just don't think that he's the right guy for this team. I will be very happy to be proven wrong.  I will be curious to see how his feisty presence works here, both with the team and with the media, but the guy was fired from Madison Square Gardens because his team didn't score enough.  Is that really what we need here?  Granted that may be exactly the kind of style that Luongo flourishes under, but I'm not so eager to watch that kind of hockey.
Vigneault had to go.  I liked him, but it was clear that a change had to be made, and I'm sure that if AV hadn't been shown the door that Gillis would have been (and as I indicated earlier I don't think Gillis has much room left to work with without results.)  With that in mind I had hoped that we might bring Patrick Roy back to the NHL behind our bench.  But the Canucks were a day late firing Vigneault for that to even be a possibility.  And as the job was available in Colorado, I don't think it ever really had been an option for us.
So I guess I hope that Tortorella coaches the team he has and makes all the pieces function at their peak and doesn't try to shoe-horn it all into a system that isn't in the DNA of the team.  I hope the players recognize that, whatever the changes are from AV to Fonzie, that the status quo wasn't working and that a reasonable shift in the system could be fruitful if everyone buys in.  (Oh gawd... usually when a team "buys in" to a system, isn't the unspoken part of that; "to an un-entertaining, if effective system"?)
There is a temptation to compare Tortorella to Keenan, but I don't think that can fairly be done beyond the temper.  Tortorella was not brought in as the buddy of a hired-gun superstar, like Kennan was with Messier. (Who I loved, but his Canucks years were the among the worst for him and the team.) The team is not actually skidding the way the Canucks were in 1997 and though the teams' system needs an upgrade, there is no indication that the country-club atmosphere of the late 90s is an issue now.  Lastly, Keenan had trading power. Tortorella doesn't, and I don't think there is any chance that that kind of mistake will ever be made again on Abbott St.

Hopefully the team can pick up an interesting UFA (Lecavalier* has experience in the Tortorella system - doubt that we can fit him into our payroll though.) and give the fans something to think positively about before the first puck drops.  After that, all bets are off.  Things are extremely in question right now - volatile, even - but once the heat of this past weekend (literal and figurative) has passed there is actually plenty of reason to continue to expect the Canucks to be a contender.

A bit of a tangent as I wrap up...

Regarding the notion that there is a conspiracy to keep the Canucks from ever winning a Cup:

First off.... Why?  What purpose does that serve?

I will grant there does seem to be some favouritism in the league.  In the past 20 Cups (21 years, due to the lock-out season) an O6 team has won 9 times. (Montreal - 1993, Rangers - 1994, Detroit - 98, 98, 02 & 08, Chicago 10 & 13, Boston 11). So perhaps - maybe even probably - there is some favouritism that creeps in via the officiating and trickling down through the media. Its hard to come up with an argument other than "an unlikely confluence of events" that explains how those specific teams should have a disproportionate number of wins amongst them.  But there is a LONG way between "subtle refereeing bias" and "conspiracy."  Furthermore it doesn't explain why only five of the O6 teams are represented in that list - in fact the team with the biggest market in the entire league, the Maple Leafs isn't on that list at all (and haven't won since before the Canucks were in the league (against St. Louis in those affirmative action years of early expansion.)
That said, there have been rules, circumstances and traditions in the past that favoured the O6 teams.  Note that for those first three years of expansion mentioned above that the Blues did not win a single game.  Also did you know (obscure fact time) that the Canadiens have the right to veto the pick of any team selecting a French Canadian player in the entry draft in order to select that player as their next pick.  (This rule was only exercised once and has since been changed so that all other GMs in the league must agree to said veto - which isn't going to happen - but the rule technically still stands.)
There is also a similar conspiracy theory - that the league doesn't want Canadian teams to win (and it has been since 1993 when the Habs last won). The basic standard explanation being that they need to keep the interest up in the States by continuing to bring the Cup there.  Really?  If it was a question of keeping interest high in struggling markets Wayne Gretzky would have his name on the Cup as the coach of the Coyotes.
On top of that, all standard arguments about how logistically difficult it is to maintain a conspiracy apply (in a nutshell, the number of people necessarily involved in this case would be too big for there not to be a leak) not to mention the un-equal danger of negative fall-out should such a conspiracy ever come to light.  The NHL would have its own Erik Snowden by now, if there was such a conspiracy.
So, conspiracy - no, bias - possibly.

This has been long.  I've said most of what I can imagine to say.

Go Canucks!


*EDIT: I wrote this several hours ago. About 1 minute ago I got an alert that the Flyers have signed Lecavalier.  So nix that.

President's Trophy Redux

Here we go again.

The Canucks are once again the number one team in the NHL.  That is the second year in a row that they have won the President’s Trophy. 

I wasn’t particularly upset last year when they lost the Stanley Cup in the seventh game to Boston.  Disappointed, for certain, but it was hard for me to be truly down.  They had been, not only the best Canucks team ever, but on paper they were one of the best teams ever in the regular season – only letting go of a truly remarkable statistic in the final game of the season (they very nearly had not only the league’s number one position, but also the most goals for, the least against, the best power-play and the best penalty kill – the last of which slipped from their grasp in the final game.)  They were the Western Conference Champions, they were assured a heap of hardware at the NHL awards, they had got the Blackhawks money off their back... what was not to love?  (Well, the asshole “fans” who rioted after game seven, that is what – but that is a separate tale.)  They had taken too many games to get to the final round and simply didn’t have enough gas left in the tank to beat what was quite possibly the goalie on the hottest hot streak ever.  Tim Thomas, Boston’s back-stopper, topped off a season that will be in the conversation any time people discuss the best season a goal tender ever had, with a Stanley Cup raising ceremony on our home ice.

But enough of Boston.  The Canucks were a wickedly good team last year – like the kind of team that could be threatening to dominate for years.  (I said so then, just check my Facebook feed.)  That was what mattered to me, that we were that good.  Losing game seven was simply a lesson – a team learning what it takes to go all the way.  The same lesson well served both the Edmonton dynasty of the 80s and the never ending juggernaut – now well into its second generation of players – known as the Detroit Red Wings (who won 1/3^rd of the Stanley Cups between 1997 and 2008! as well as not missing the finals in nearly two decades – indeed this year may be their least contenderish since I was in University, and they are still to be contended with).

And now, they have done it again.  Last night they won their second President’s Trophy in as many years.  With the help of a few last minute stumbles from the Rangers and Blues, for certain, but you don’t get to the point of having the opportunity in your own hands by luck alone.

This is a pretty rare feat.  Less teams have been the top team in the league since the beginning of the expansion era than have won back to back Stanley Cups in the same period.  (President’s Trophy doesn’t go back that far, but you can do the math and project backwards.)

It is also somewhat scarily auspicious.  Every team that has won back to back President’s Trophies has gone on to win the Stanley Cup.  (Edmonton, Calgary and Dallas in their second President’s Trophy winning year; Detroit in both the following years, plus see stats above.) 

Last year when the oft repeated Canuck’s mantra “there’s always next year” began ringing again, it never felt like it was more real, and now it seems true.  The next three months will be long (especially in my neighbourhood, only 3 blocks from Rogers Arena) and the Canucks may fail again.  I won’t cry if we fall short, but the simple fact that the team is this good and it is clearly not a hiccough does make me well-up.  The Canucks have been good for years now, but their current level is truly something to behold. 

I simply don’t buy the “woe is us” attitude of most Vancouver fans.  Yeah, we don’t have a cup (yet), but there are teams that are worse off.  Teams that have gone longer.  Teams whose road has been rockier.  Teams who, even without the past two or even five years of Canuck’s success taken into account, haven’t seen even the Canuck’s level of success.  Specifically I think of the St. Louis Blues – who entered the league two years ahead of Vancouver and have only been to the cup final twice.  But that was during the NHLs expansion equivalent of affirmative action – where the expansion teams competed for one Cup final position, while the Original Six competed for the other.  Or, look at the sorry fate of Buffalo.  The Sabers and Vancouver joined the league together.  The Sabers infamously won the coin toss for top-draft pick and chose the mighty Gilbert Perrault, while Vancouver got Dale Tallon, who while a known Vancouver name, largely due to being our first ever draft pick, was not even close to the career-quality of Hall of Famer, Perrault.  Even with that extra out-of-the-gate advantage, the Sabers have only been to the Cup finals once.  And what a Cup final it was... the right team won (not the Sabers), but for absolutely the wrong reasons.  (You may recall that the NHL changed the rules as to what constitutes a goal for exactly the length of time it took for Brett Hull to put his foot in the crease and sneak the puck past Hasek and for the Dallas Stars to lift the hardware into the air.  No, really, go and check out the time line.  No exaggeration.  That is almost exactly how long the rule was in effect.  Almost certainly the worst single call in the history of the NHL.  But I digress...) 

We can’t complain.  The Canucks have been to the Cup final three times now – twice punching above their weight, and once by simply being mighty.  And if history repeats, we will be there again this year, hoisting the hardware.  Yes, I will be happier once we have won the Stanley Cup, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  The Canucks of this decade are the best they have ever been, and I am delighted to revel in that.

One Exhausting Step Away

(Hmmm... for some reason this didn't post four days ago when I thought I had.... probably mental exhaustion.  I could pretend I never wrote it now that the Canucks have failed to win the Stanley Cup... but that would be disingenuous.)

I haven't played 24 high stakes games of one of the most physically punishing games on earth over the past two months, and I am exhausted.
For reasons not entirely divorced from the Stanley Cup playoffs I am approaching the limits of my endurance. This is in turn has burned my emotional state down to the ragged end of the wick. I wouldn't want to exist in this state for much longer, but for the moment it is exhilarating.
We live downtown - close enough to the arena that when we lived on the other side of the building, games on TV were spoiled by the noise from the arena. Stupid TV delay.
Now, every few nights, we host a raucous celebration eight floors below our bedroom. I'm not complaining. I've celebrated too, I am over the moon, so are 100000 other fans downtown creating our own Blue Mile. I would never take this away from them.
On top of that I am working two jobs, producing a DVD, planning a DVD release party, had a piece of titanium inserted in my jaw last week, out of necessity rode my bike up hill for an hour and a half (no exaggeration) yesterday (first ride in months), and on top of it all I still have no idea how to sanely schedule my life around being a parent.  I am wiped out.

Every year as the playoffs begin I allow myself several moments of imagination, thinking about what it would be like to watch the Canucks hoist the Stanley Cup. And every year the dame thing happens. I experience a moment of overwhelming emotion which I quell - disallowing myself the full faux experience - only to later experience the all too familiar hollow feeling of yet another year of disappointment.

But this year we just keep going.  It's fucking glorious. But it is getting a bit embarrassing.  As we step closer and closer to winning - now closer than we have ever been - and as my fatigue makes my emotional state increasingly prone to fragility I find it harder and harder to control those fleeting moments where I seriously consider the possibility of the Canucks as Stanley Cup champions.
I have to concentrate at work today to keep from thinking momentary thoughts that are betrayed in my voice.

I'm not ashamed of feeling this way. Indeed, I am revelling in it. Should tonight we unite Stanley's Cup with his park, or should it be Wednesday, it will never feel like this again. Not in my lifetime. No matter how many times we win. So I may as well be experiencing this from a position of scant emotional control - to go all the way.

As it is said. History will be made.

See you on Granville Mall.

I, For One, Believe We have Done It

I had about half my voice yesterday from screaming so hard the previous night. From where I sat last night under the big screen at the Cambie it appeared that Vancouver was losing its mind.


With good reason.

The Canucks were finally winning a playoff game in the manner we'd been expecting all post season. But I think there was something else in the air. Not the collective hate-on for Ben Eager's appalling sportsmanship, nor reactions to the lass who showed us there is a new bra-size on the market with Stanley Cups.

I think we all suddenly saw our future. The one where the last 40 years are behind us. The one where Vancouver is not only home to Lord Stanley's Park, but his coveted Cup as well.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Those chickens ain't hatched. We still need six wins. It's the playoffs, anything can happen."

Yes. You are absolutely right. But go with me a moment. Look ahead 6-12 games to the night that I imagine I'll be crying tears of joy and Granville & Robson looks a lot like it did on February 28 2010. We will look back at Tuesday's game as the point where it all fell into place.

The only people who think the remaining Eastern Conference teams stand a chance against either of the top two Western teams, wear Tampa and Boston jersey either professionally or recreationally. (Though Chara and Thomas will put up a better fight.) And a 2-0 lead in the Conference final is nearly insurmountable. The Sharks are showing no sign of having a miracle comeback in them, and the San Jose news outlets are singing a defeatist tune that would have sounded all too familiar to Canucks fans not long ago. In other words, the real battle for the Stanley Cup moves to the HP Pavilion tonight, and we seriously have the upper hand. Indeed a 4 or 5 game series while the East hammer each other for 6 or 7 will all but seal the deal.

What I am saying is that if the team sticks to the game plan, and doesn't act with laissez-faire entitlement, we have turned the corner. Tuesday night, in the back of every Canucks fan's heart was the knowledge that with that game we had most likely won the Stanley Cup.

Whew!

So for context, the Canucks just...

Beat their arch nemesis of three years.  Beat the Stanley Cup Champions.  Beat the Money on their Backs.  Beat the Monkey on Luongo's back.  Beat This Series.  And learned a hard lesson.

I just wrote this in an email to a friend:

I want Vancouver v. Buffalo.


1970s expansion Cup.

Ya know... we in Vancouver feel hard done by by the hockey gods.

Buffalo won the draft coin flip (not lettery) that year and got Gilbert Perrault.

Since then we've been to the Cup final twice - once to game seven and a cross bar. Buffalo has been there once and lost it on a bullshit refereeing call in game six. (And in a fair fight they would have lost anyhow.) So really, we are a head of the curve for the class of 1970.

An Open Letter to the NHL

A few things to get out of the way before I really start ranting...


I'm not the conspiracy sort. I don't think Gary Bettman has it out for the Canucks or Canadian teams in general.

Also, I'll be happy to be the first to point out that teams can't afford to squander a game (or TWO) just in case the referees determine the results of a game (or two).

I'm not typically one to point at imbalanced refereeing and call foul.  Usually I accept that these things tend to equal out in the long run and that we as observers tend to cherry pick the officiating that supports the view from our side of hockey fandom.

All that in mind, regarding tonight's game between the Canucks and Blackhawks... WHAT THE FUCK!?!

Seriously.  What the fuck was that?

In any game I cry out "What? That should have been a penalty!" a dozen or so times.  I am not even going to bother with any of the stuff that I know was me simply picking my team's side of an 'iffy' 50/50 call.  There's no point - that is the stuff that I figure equals out in the end. 

There were seven separate instances in tonight's game - mostly in the 3rd and OT periods - that were all well beyond my level of tolerance, and two of them each on their own unequivocally make the difference in the game.... but I'll save those for last.

1) I was always of the belief that taking a stick to the face was just about automatically a high-sticking penalty.

...oh right... historically that doesn't count when it's against a Sedin twin.

2) When someone swings their stick downwards at another player's stick and breaks it in two... isn't that slashing?  Or does the Sedin exemption count for that too?

3) I'm guessing that somewhere between when Hodgson put the puck over the glass and when the Blackhawks did the same thing that the rules changed... or perhaps a Sedin was on the ice?

4) If you took tonight's hit on Bieksa and overlaid it with the hit on Seabrook from game three - they are the exact same hit.  I don't think that Torres should have been penalized, but give me a fucking break.  Of these four points this one is by far the most egrigious.  Be consistent at least!

All of the above seem pretty fucking obvious to me.  Each of those should have been a penalty in the Canucks' favour.  Would those power plays have resulted in game-changing goals?  Maybe.  Heck, the Canucks DID score on just shy of one quarter of their power plays in the regular season, so it's an even bet that there's another goal hiding in those bullshit calls.

What about the other three...

5) So, the 'Hawks ice the puck and have exhausted players on the ice and no time-out left.  Looks like a break for the Canucks!  Until some ass-hat decides that it's a perfectly good time for the snow-crew to hit the ice.  I don't know who makes the decisions about these things, but I'm guessing it has more to do with arena operations than NHL officiating.  I'm kinda figuring that the folks who run the United Centre are 'Hawks faithful.  You know, I always thought that when a fan causes a critical delay of game that it was a penalty for the benefiting team.  I admit I don't know quite how this is supposed to work, but the timing of the ice maintenance stinks.  Even the commentators on CBC were caught off-guard by it.  This just doesn't pass the sniff test.

And now the real juice.

6) The Frolik penalty shot.  Bieska didn't even touch him until he had already lost his footing, and even then he hardly touched him.  Penalty shot?  Really?  Let's look at how this one plays out... Frolik punches over his weight-class and scores the tying goal.  Without that goal, the game and series is over at the end of regulation.

7) The early whistle.  You know the one I mean.  The puck slips under Crawford's pads for a fraction of a second - a stick (a Sedin stick I believe) slips in and pokes it out as the whistle blows, the puck is slapped into the net reflexively before the whistle quits reverbing.  The whistle was absurdly fast and the rest of that play would have happened with or without the ref stopping play.  Without the whistle: goal - Canucks.  The 'Hawks don't score a fourth goal until the 16th minute of overtime... long after the game would have been over had it been 4-3 canucks after 60 minutes of play.

The Canucks were the better team through most of this game - and all but about one critical second of overtime.  I accept that there is some randomness, but that is a big part of why we play best of seven, to help filter it out.  But if the referees have to filter out their own biases - or whatever the fuck happened out there tonight - it makes a mockery of the sport.  The Canucks had better win game seven so I can just forget about this.

You Can't Take That Away From Me

The Canucks played thier first game on my first birthday.  They lost.

Canucks fans - the long term, well studied ones - can lay out a long history of might have beens that begin with not quite making the cut for the orginal expansion, and then losing first draft pick two years later (Gilbert Perrault) on a coin flip to the Buffalo Sabres.  The list goes on and on - Cam Neely, Nathan Lafayette and the cross-bar, that whiny punk Pavel Bure (which started well if you recall - and if you look at the eventual trade, did work out in Canuck's favour), the Messier years (also a lot of up-side which we are witnessing now.)  The Steve Moore hit... oh that fucking Steve Moore hit - arguably cost us a cup... see, I'm not immune! In our best years the Canucks have been a team that has been over achieveing.

But damn we are a good team this year.  Tonight we clinched the President's Cup.  Not barely.  Decisively.

Sure we did it at the expense of the rest of our division.  Calgary hasn't mathematically been eliminated from the playoffs yet, but it isn't looking good, even if they are the only real remaining candidate.  We have decimated our four most immediate rivals.  Soundly.  Two of them sit at the bottom of the entire league.  (No hard feelings Edmonton, but this is what the mid-eighties felt like.)

The 2011 Vancouver Canucks are a really good team.  And it's not just the Sedins (who are collectively going to win two Art Rosses in two years (Squee!)) and Luongo (probable Vezina candidate.)  The rest of the team is as solid a supporting cast as any team realistically needs these days.  It is a beautiful thing.  And it has been creeping up on us for a few years - even most of a decade if you look closely.

I'm not pretending that the President's Trophy is as important as winning the Stanley Cup - no way.  But hey - we just won the President's Trophy tonight with five games to go.  Five games wherein most of the team can relax a bit.  Daniel still needs to keep scoring a point a game for a three or so tilts to be secure with the scoring title, but if anyone is disappointed with this season they haven't been paying attention, or they are nothing more than fair weather playoff-fans.

Forty years coming.  And yeah, so many times in the past this would have felt like an April Fools' joke, but...

You can not take this away from me.

Damn that Puck Luck!

Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of accusing the Canucks of rolling over and dying.

And while I'm at it, let me compile a shot list of reasons the call-in radio-show crowd will be perpetuating – none of which are the reason they lost:

Bad officiating.

A no-show from Mats Sundin.

Poor coaching.

Playing defensively.

I'm not even going to get down on Luongo for looking human in the conference semi-finals.

So what did it then? I propose it was a confluence of things – let's face it, it almost always is – some of which have seeds of truth in the points listed above, but as much as anything, that elusive x-factor "puck-luck" worked against us more than in favour of us, largely by when it reared its head. The Canucks got favourable bounces and unforeseeable circumstances, but never when it counted.

Few people mention or even noticed when in game two a Canucks player lost his stick; if flew up in the air, half of the distance into the defensive end, landing... right back in its owners hands. It didn't amount to anything. I don't even recall who it was and can't find it on-line... because it never made a bit of difference.

But when it mattered most, time after time, the 'Hawks got the breaks.

Game one was a squeaker. The Canucks came out strong with three goals, and then gave up three before taking advantage of the 'Hawks aggression and getting behind their defence for a three on one game winner.

Game two the Canucks came out blazing again, and again it bit back. This time it was a disaster. Chicago's facility with the stretch-pass owned the Canucks, and even though Luongo was still making some spectacular saves he wasn't a sheet of plywood across the goal-mouth and pucks were making it in. To his credit, most of the shots that made it in were good plays on Chicago's part. If anyone was to blame, it was the skaters in front of him – but in their defence, a locked-down game was clearly not the plan. To make matters worse, two back to back bad bits of luck burned the Canucks hard. First, on the penalty-kill – which up to that point had been the Canucks stock-in-trade for months – the puck went off Willie Mitchell's stick over the glass in the defensive end. There wasn't the least bit of intention to do so on his part, it just happened that way. On the ensuing three on five Kelser broke his stick and could not get to the bench to get another, effectively giving the Hawks a five on two and a half. It's no wonder they scored, and that is where things really turned in that game. The flood gates opened and Luongo let more pucks past him than he had in the entire St. Louis series. Psychologically I propose that was a HUGE blow.

For game three coach Alain Vigneault recognized that Chicago's style of offence – specifically that stretch pass – HAD to be shut down. And for the most part, in game three it worked. It would be the last game the Canucks would win.

Game four the Canucks employed the same strategy that won them game three. And why not? Letting the Chicago offence have its' way had led to near disaster in game one, and DID lead to disaster in game two. The plan worked. For most of the game. With less than three minutes left Willie Mitchell had to make a split-second decision about where to clear the puck. He made the high-percentage choice – the one he should make on instinct when there is no time to consider. In other words, in MOST cases clearing the puck along the boards instead of up the middle is the right play for a defenseman to make. This time however there happened to be a flotilla of Blackhawks where he was clearing to... and they scored. Overtime went the Hawks' way too. And THAT was the real turning point of the series. I don't think there is any hockey literate fan who would really bother arguing otherwise.

Game five Vigneault stuck to the plan. It had worked in game three and had for all practical purposes worked in game four – except for those last few crucial minutes. He felt he had more to be scared of the 'Hawks shooting game, and that seems like a reasonable assumption. Once again it nearly works. But twice more puck-luck fucks us late in the game. Arguably Kelser's botched clearing attempt was bad luck giving Bfuglien a momentum changing goal. If someone wants to declare that Kelser failed on that play, I won't stop them. He was mid-check and clearing one-handed. Even if he failed, he was making the play under duress. But then... on the penalty-kill again, Mitchell (Notice how often he is associated with the bad puck luck? Hmmm... perhaps we should be looking harder at Mitchell, but I don't hear him being offered the horns much.) breaks his stick... and Chicago gets the go-ahead. And then to add insult to injury... that is very nearly a pun – with Luongo out of net for the extra attacker in the final two minutes and the assault on Khabibulin mounted, Kelser and Salo trip over each other allowing Havlat an empty net goal. He was probably half-embarrassed to put it in the net, but how could he not?

With the series on the line, Vigneault was put in a bad position. He had to change the game plan again. He had to abandon the strategy that had worked in game three and had worked in games four and five – except for crucial moments where fate had different plans – BECAUSE despite being effective for 90% of the game, that 10% where it didn't cost us the game... twice. He was forced to go back to the strategy that had nearly lost us one game and lost us a second BADLY.

Game six... was insane. A five – seven outcome for the Hawks doesn't tell the tale. The whole game was back and forth and even in the dying minutes two goals behind it still felt like the Canucks might come back. Not much puck luck giving the Canucks the gears in this game. The team just isn't the right team to beat Chicago at their own game. Vigneault accurately said this himself a week ago in mid-series. We made a good show of it, but in the wash the Canucks played better defensive games against Chicago than the run and gun games.

Before game six started, Ami, one of the friends I watched with asked me to predict what was going to be the game story. I said "Knowing that if we don't win that it's the last game of his career, Sundin will play like we've never seen him play." I'd argue that he did. He scored what in almost any other game would have been the game winner but it was soon answered, and he was regularly in the play. For the playoffs, Mats Sundin was third to the Sedins in both scoring and goals. Mats Sundin was NOT the problem on this team.

Bad officiating? Alain Vigneault has the class to not bitch about iffy-calls. He knows they all equal out over time. Canucks fans can suck it up and do the same. I doubt that there was a single call in this series that the refs heard back from Toronto about after the fact.

Bad coaching – Vigneault did what he had to do and made the right choices. They just don't always work out. If anything, he should have stuck to his guns and kept with the defensive game for game six. The previous two losses under that system were mostly due to unfortunate circumstances. But I can't say I blame him for changing. If he stuck to the plan and lost he'd put his job in jeopardy. Making the change, win or lose, he'd made a proactive choice. Alain will still be our coach next year.

Defensive play? – The Canucks won one and lost two for each style of play; offensive and defensive. I don't like to count empty-net goals – they skew the stats away from the real game story. In any case, take the games the Canucks played defensively and the games they played offensively and compare them. All goals counted, the Hawks out-scored the Canucks 7-6 in defensive games; and 16-13 in offensive games. Take away empty net goals and its 6-6 in defensive games and 16-12 in offensive games. Though I don't have the figure in front of me, I am confident that if the amount of time the Canucks held the lead in those games were compared, the difference would be even more apparent. Now... which way came closer to winning?

Anyhow... there's always next year!

Keep Vigneault. Re-sign the Sedins. Give Mitchell a good shake. Hope Kelser plays more like his best than his mediocre self. Give Sundin a heart-felt handshake, thank him for the effort, and buy him a watch. Think hard about the futures of Salo and Demitra... they too may be put out to stud, but not with a hint of shame. Then acquire a few really promising free agents and show Luongo that this is a team he's going to want to keep fighting alongside of after next season... you know, the season where we win the Cup.