Let The Bodies Hit the Floor

 Blog  6 Responses »
May 042009
 

Amidst the chaos and stampede caused by the bandwagon emptying on Saturday, one thing was overlooked. It’s something that has killed the Canucks in the first two games and has subtly been a difference maker in the series so far. Hits.

One of the main reasons that the Blackhawks are coming back from 2 and 3 goal deficits is largely due to their hits, but it starts with their forchecking and playing of the body. The Canucks by no means boast a small roster, Hordichuk, Salo, Mitchell, Bieksa, and Rypien all know how to throw those big bone jarring heavy hits, and yet they’ve been quiet. Where has Shane O’Brien’s body been? On Saturday the biggest hit by a Canucks player was by Mason Raymond. Think about that for a second, then think about how horribly wrong that is.

The Canucks are playing a finesse team that they should be able to take the body to, yet they’re letting the liks of Burrish, Byfuglien and Eager push and throw them around. The Blackhawks are coming back because they’re able to win the battles to the puck (because of their forechecking and hitting) and they’re able to break the Canucks off the puck. The Canucks just aren’t asserting themselves physically at all and it’s hurting them.

Where’s Rypien been? After coming back full of energy and throwing his body into people like a runaway car, he’s been silent. Horidchuck was brought in for the rough stuff, and he’s quieter than the Sedins back when they were regularly referred to as the Sedin Sisters. Burrows who usually also catapults his body into players against the boards has been pretty tame. They have got to start beat Chicago up a little. I’m not talking about going head hunting, or taking lessons from Brashear, Downey, or Mike Brown on how to perfectly line up your elbow with the temple of someone’s head, but I do expect the Canucks to start playing some solid physical hockey. If that means subbing in Davison for Salo instead of Vaananen then so be it. The Canucks need to set the tone in the first period in Game 3 and it’s going to start with some hard hits.

And as pump of for game 3, nothing better than the song which aptly fits the title of this post. Get Amped! – http://twisten.fm/l/3QJF

Side Note: Guts McTavish takes on the Chicago writers.

MSM links for May 4, 2009

 MSM  No Responses »
May 042009
 

The Salo effect

 Blog  No Responses »
May 042009
 

The Vancouver Canucks flew to Chicago this morning; Sami Salo wasn’t on the flight.

The Vancouver Canucks made the trip to the Windy City without defenceman Sami Salo.

He remained in Vancouver for treatment on a lower-body injury suffered in Game 2 of the Canucks’ Western Conference semifinal series versus the Chicago Blackhawks.

Salo came off the ice after he scored the first Vancouver goal in Saturday’s 6-3 loss. Afterward, coach Alain Vigneault would only say that it’s a lower-body injury and that Salo was listed as day-to-day.

If Salo is out for any extended period of time, it’s a tremendous loss to the Canucks. Including Saturday night’s game when he left in the 1st period, the Canucks are 39-18-7 with Salo in the lineup and 10-10-3 without him.

Simply, he’s their best overall defenseman. He plays with Willie Mitchell on the team’s shutdown pairing and he moves the puck better than any Canuck defenseman. He plays on the 1st unit powerplay, and in fact, 14 of his 25 regular season points and all 5 of his goals were on the powerplay; 2 of those goals were game-winners. He has 6 points so far in the playoffs and 4 of them were on the powerplay; he has 3 goals, including 2 on the powerplay and 2 game-winners.

Needless to say, the Canucks will need the rest of the defense to step it up. In all likelihood, Ossi Vaananen will replace Salo in the lineup. Vaananen played some big minutes alongside Kimmo Timonen earlier in the season so he should be able to play Salo’s minutes. (He logged 17:54 minutes of ice-time in game 4 of the St. Louis series.) He’s also a more defensively-minded defenseman which should free up someone like Kevin Bieksa offensively.

Now speaking of Bieksa, I think he needs to step up his game the most. In the regular season, he led the defense with 43 points in 72 games (0.60 points/game). So far, he has 2 assists in 6 playoff games and he plays the second-most powerplay ice-time of all Canucks defensemen (4:00 PP minutes/game). (Alex Edler leads the team averaging 4:01 PP minutes/game). That’s not to say he hasn’t been productive because he’s contributed in other ways, but with Salo out, they need him to start contributing offensively again as well.

On Big Hockey Hair Talk Show at noon

 Blog  No Responses »
May 032009
 

A quick programming note:

I’m going to be on the Big Hockey Hair Talk Show on BlogTalk Radio today at noon. Tune in – and call in – as we recap the first two games of the Canucks/Blackhawks series.

[update: 05/03/2009, 1:01 PM]

Great chat with Ailyn, Matthew (Second City Hockey) and Paul (Sportsbank.net and NBC Chicago Sports). And no, the bad blood on the ice hasn’t quite spilled over to the bloggers yet.

Anyway, if you missed it, you can listen to it here or using the player below.

Goodbye Bandwagon, See you all after Game 3

 Blog  2 Responses »
May 022009
 

As the bandwagon spills over the edges there are several things which were a bit worrisome in game 2, but there was one or two things to take away from the game.

Luongo can now say he’s had his bad game. Get that out of the way, I’m positive he’ll come back stronger and make a statement on the road at the United Center in Chicago. What worries me the most is that with the loss of Salo the defence collapsed quickly. That being said, we’ve seen the Canucks play well during the long stretch he missed during the regular season, and with the veteran play of Mitchell they have the depth to pull together and move on until he returns.

Salo, the Canucks 2nd leading scorer in this year’s playoffs proved how important he is to the power play’s success again tonight and there’s no doubt Khabibulin is hoping he doesn’t have to face that shot in game 3. Lets be realistic though. The Canucks (as much as we’d like and hoped for) were not going to go 16-0 through the playoffs. The Blackhawks weren’t going to take the series lying down, and the Canucks had to lose at some point. I’m glad they lost when they did. There’s never a good time to lose, but losing the first game would have put them in a hole deep. The fact that they’ve split the first two puts them at square one with this now becoming a best of five.

Certain things were inevitable in this series. The Canucks were going to lose at least once. Khabibulin was going to win and finally break his 11 year losing streak versus the Canucks. The Canucks were going to falter.

Now that the reality check has set in, it’s on, it’s a new series. The fact they won game one despite blowing a 3 goal lead didn’t do the trick. They looked flat and the loss of Salo (who is day-to-day with a lower body injury) seemed to hurt. This year though, we’re not as bad off as we would otherwise be. Edler is stepping up nicely, Ossi Vaananen has proved he can be a consistently solid defensive replacement, and this is exactly what Gillis brought him in for.

While it looks like there’s not a lot to take out of this, the fact that we lost is like getting a monkey off our back. It lowers the bar of expectation which was getting a little high, and taking the Canucks a notch down which is never a bad thing. They weren’t getting cocky and overzealous, but they needed to stay down to earth and keep things in check. If nothing, that’s one of the biggest things to take out of this game. While a loss is never something you want, it can be a blessing in disguise. The Canucks don’t want to be Cinderella this year and losing that first game is one of the steps to making sure that doesn’t happen.

The ship’s not sinking, it’s just leaving port. The series is starting fresh, and we should have some great hockey ahead.

MSM links for May 2, 2009

 MSM  No Responses »
May 022009
 

Colin Campbell sucks at his job

 Blog  No Responses »
May 022009
 

The NHL has apparently decided that Ben Eager’s cheap, late hit to Rick Rypien’s head was a clean and legal one. Because Rypien wasn’t injured.

I’d point out this fail, except Colin Campbell has been so horribly and maddeningly inconsistent that I’m just not surprised anymore. It’s no wonder that head shots are a regular occurence these days – heck, Mike Brown took a late run at Jiri Hudler last night too – if players know they’re going to get away with it.

In Eager’s case, Campbell’s decision has set a bad precedent. Eager has been told that the hit was okay, and now, he’s gone as far admitting he’ll do it again if given the opportunity:

“It seems every time there’s a big hit everyone is thinking suspension,” Eager said today after the Blackhawks practised at GM Place. ” You know, it’s playoff hockey, there’s going to be hits, you’ve got to keep your head up out there.

“I was just backchecking, and I’m not going to turn off a hit like that. And we had two good refs out there and they both saw it and there was no major penalty or anything. If there’s a hit like that I’m going to take it again.”

Way to go, NHL. I just hope the next time Eager nails someone in the head, that he gets up fine like Rypien did.

Now, instead of letting Ben the Bully get to their heads, the Canucks need to focus on their own game plan. Their game 1 was far from perfect and there’s no sense on wasting any more energy on a pansy who’ll never drop the gloves against anyone his own size.

In the St. Louis series, the Canucks responded to goonery by scoring on the powerplay, which was a solid 4-for-18 (22.2%) against the Blues. While Eager wasn’t subsequently suspended, he did receive a *ahem* minor penalty on the hit. However, the Canucks didn’t score on the ensuing powerplay, and in fact, they only scored on 1 of their 7 opportunities in game 1. If the powerplay is more successful, maybe the Blackhawks will take less liberties. If the NHL won’t do anything to deter these cheap hits from happening, maybe the powerplay will.

Rusty Confidence

 Blog  6 Responses »
May 012009
 

The 10 day break was long and hard for fans and for the players. So much so that Bieksa and Kesler even got into it a little bit in practice. But that’s a good thing. It showed they still had their edge.

First game against the Blackhawks was everything people expected and then some. A rollercoaster of emotion GM Place went from being louder than a jet engine, to being so quiet you could hear mice scurrying around in the rafters. The Canucks didn’t show an abundance of rust, and they didn’t show an a lot of over confidence either. They played 45 minutes in a 60 minute game and one could argue came out on the lucky end of the draw.

In the first period the Canucks rust showed, they were unable to keep pucks in at the blue line, they were messing up routine plays. At the start of the third they let their over confidence show a little, and who better than the Canucks to show you how to blow a 3 goal lead. Hordichuck’s penalty was a bad one, a costly one, and a big turning point in the game.

While the Canucks did surrender 3 unanswered to blow that huge usually-safe-when-other-teams-have-it lead the reassuring thing was that none of the goals Luongo let in were bad. Luongo after letting in only 5 goals in the four games against St. Louis can now say he’s had his bad game. He looked solid despite the lack of game time in the last week and a half and the whole team looked like they used game one as a get-back-in-the-groove-of-things game. They escaped with the win and I’ve never seen Sami Salo so excited in my entire life.

In Game 2 the Canucks are going for a franchise record 6th straight playoff win, they’ve currently tied their franchise record of 5 playoff wins in a row which they accomplished twice during their ’94 cup run, and their 9th win a row including their last three games of the regular season. In that time Luongo is 8-0 with 3 shutouts.

The Canucks and Blackhawks both looked timid in the first game. The Canucks were getting back into things, the Blackhawks were still tired from round one and were struggling to find their game during the first two periods, and both teams were feeling out the refs. I have a feeling Game 2 is going to be faster, fiestier, and even better than the first game. The rust covered confidence the Canucks had in the first game is out the window. They found their legs towards the end of the game and as the game progressed you could tell they were falling into sync with each stride they took. What better matchup to headline Canada’s favourite Saturday past time, Hockey Night in Canada, than showcasing what is now “Canada’s Team”, the Canucks, as they are the last remaining Canadian team in the hunt for Stanley. Canucks and Blackhawks game 2 is going to see a lot more hitting and energy.

Oh yeah, and that Khabibulin guy, still hasn’t beaten us since 1998.

Dumb penalties, cheap shots, and hopefully, lessons learned

 Blog  2 Responses »
May 012009
 

Last night’s 5-3 win over the Chicago Blackhawks was an important one. The obvious first reason is that it gave our Vancouver Canucks a 1-0 series lead. That’s cool, but also, the process by which they won will surely serve as a lesson for the remainder of the series.

After building a 3-0 lead in the first 40 minutes, the Canucks came out flat in the third period. For the first 18 minutes of the third period, their defensive coverage was sloppy and they showed about as much emotion as Freddie Prinze Jr. in character. As unthinkable as it seemed at the time, they allowed the Blackhawks to claw back and tie the game.

To be fair, the Canucks kept their composure, and in the end, they pulled off the victory anyway… but not before I hope they learnt, 1) to play the full 60 minutes, and 2) not to take these Blackhawks lightly.

*****

I love what Darcy Hordichuk and Rick Rypien has brought to this lineup, but man, the penalties they took last night were just dumb.

*****

Speaking of dumb…

You guys already know how I feel about the NHL’s method for disciplining players. I wonder how they will handle Ben Eager’s late hit to Rick Rypien’s head.

In a lot of ways, it’s similar to Donald Brashear’s hit on Blair Betts last week – a cheap shot that earned Brashear a six-game suspension. Take a look:

Both Brashear and Eager went out of their way to deliver late, late hits to the head. Both have a history of these sorts of incidents with the league. If one was suspended, shouldn’t the other be as well?

MSM links for May 1, 2009

 MSM  No Responses »
May 012009
 
 Older Entries  Newer Entries