Mats Sundin playing for the Leafs

Mats Sundin

• Age signing for Canucks: 37
• Canucks Rival Played For: Toronto Maple Leafs
• Team Leader Replacing: Marcus Naslund, Trevor Linden
• Number of Stanley Cups Won: 0
• Selection of Awards Won: Mark Messier Leadership Award, Regular All-Star, Regular for Swedish National Team

Mark Messier playing for the Canucks, remember that?

Mark Messier

• Age When Signing for Canucks: 36
• Canucks Rivals Played For: Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers
• Team Leader Replacing: Trevor Linden
• Number of Stanley Cups Won: 6 (all prior to coming to Vancouver)
• Selection of Awards Won: Conn Smythe Trophy, Regular All-Star, Regular Appearing for the Canadian National Team, ranked as the 12th best player ever by The Hockey News.

Photos:
Mark Messier by: Håkan Dahlström from Flickr
Mats Sundin by: mlynaugh from Flickr

I want to like the Vancouver Canucks, I really do. I want to feel like they’re my team, and try I’ve given it my all to root for them [mbv]. For God’s sake I’ve lived in British Columbia for the past twenty-four years, it’s about time I consider myself a Canucks fan. Right?

The thing is those formative years spent in Edmonton are powerful, and especially during the time I was there. Memory and nostalgia are a hard thing to overcome, which is why the good ol’ days always seem better than they were. It’s even harder to put aside the past when the past could kick the present’s ass on the ice any day of the week.

It’s not the Canucks’ fault that they’re not as good as the Oilers of my youth, because… well because nobody is. The team that I grew up with was the greatest hockey team the world has seen, and probably will ever see again until the NHL shrinks down to a smaller size. All the big money teams that the Red Wings or Colorado might try to put together will never compete with the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s, it was just so good.

How good was it? It was so good that even the people who lived in the shadow of the giants like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey are bound for the Hockey Hall of Fame. Yesterday Vancouver born Glen Anderson was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame [nhl] as a further sign that there was something special about that team. He’s not the first name that pops to mind when you think of the Oilers’ dynasty, but he was an important part.

He was even a Canuck for a few days in 1996, though he was claimed by the Oilers on waivers.

While I’d love to see the Canucks lift the cup, and in a lot of ways I think there’s certainly a segment of the Canuck fans that deserve to see their team win, I have to admit I’ll never love them as much as I love the Oilers. They’ll never be as good as the team I grew up with, though let’s be honest the Oilers will never be that good either.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t think the Canucks have been making very good decisions lately. The off-season has had the sort of amateur blunders that make Newcastle United look like a properly organized football team. But that’s enough mixing sports, we’re here to talk about hockey and the Vancouver Canucks and how they’ve just gone an appointed goaltender Roberto Luongo as their captain.

Now of course there’s a rule against a goaltender being a captain in the NHL [wp] that’s based on that fact that since the primary on-ice role of the captain is to act as a liaison between the team and the officials during the game, and that it would be too time consuming for a goalie to rush out of his net to argue with the referee every time he wanted to argue said ref’s decision. So Luongo won’t technically be the captain, he won’t wear the ‘C’ or take part in any official face-offs say if the Queen were to stop by to drop the puck.

At least unless the team has gone far more loopy than we all thought.

Unless they’re all on wacky pills at GM Place, and really it’s too early in the reason to call that one, the Canucks simply recognized as a team leader. He’ll be in charge of being the team’s dressing room leader, be responsible to organizing team social events and act as the representative between the team and the community.

So he’ll be doing fun runs and posing for pictures with babies.

He’ll also be the first one handed the Stanley Cup when his team wins it. That team won’t be the Canucks of course, but who knows where he’ll end up after this.

Vancouver has of course a lot of experience with an un-official Captain, since let’s face it the team never did the right thing to honour Trevor Linden with the ‘C’ after his return despite the fact that from most accounts he was the on and off ice leader during the end of last season.

But enough about the past. It’s time to be optimistic, and because of this decision I’m in a mood to upgrade my season prediction from missing the playoffs to almost making the playoffs. Now that’s what you call leadership.

Update: The CBC say everything I do with half the words and a third the venom [cbc].

Let’s face it this year has the potential to be a horrible hockey year for Vancouver. Pick up tickets to the WHL Giants because the Canucks have all the markings of a disaster about them as the year is about to begin. Making the playoffs will be unlikely in a competitive Western Conference where every team has strengthened while the Canucks have been throwing talent overboard as if hoping to right a sinking ship. The off-season has been a farce and there’s nothing to suggest that’s about to change.

How bad is it? You’ll find out after the jump.

An off-season to forget

Appointing a rookie General Manager sounds kind of dumb for a team that’s meant to be a Stanley Cup contender, but that sort of limited ambition is what Vancouver fans should have come to expect. Nobody is aiming to win, they’re just aiming not to come in last. The appointment of Mike Gillis made a little more sense when you consider that he was the Canucks star player Marcus Naslund’s agent prior to that. Obviously keeping Canucks captain Naslund was important, especially given the retirement of the team’s other leader Trevor Linden had retired. Too bad then that they didn’t even offer him a new contract.

Instead of resigning Naslund Gillis made a big deal about how the Canucks were about to sign Mats Sundin, allowing Naslund to sign for the New York Rangers. Of course talking with Sundin before talking with the press about how he was about to arrive in Vancouver might have been a good idea, because Sundin seemed surprised to learn that he had already signed with Vancouver. Sundin isn’t coming, and even if he was it’s not 1997 so I’m not sure why we wanted him.

It’s also not 2002, and so the arrival of Pavol Demitra isn’t exactly reassuring.

The Good News

I don’t want you to think it’s all bad. Okay it’s mostly bad, but even the darkest clouds have silver somewhere hidden in them. I mean if you’re going to trust cliches they do. As long as the team gives 110% every game and sticks to playing the fundamentals.

Wait… sorry I was channeling The Province.

Basically the good news is that Roberto Luongo is still a Canuck. 2007’s Hart Trophy (League MVP) runner up belongs at a better team. The Canucks will win games they’ve got no business winning because he’s in the net, and if someone could build a time machine and shoot him back in time to any of the number of years when we had Dan Cloutier in net for the playoffs the Canucks would have a few Stanley Cup banners hanging from the rafters.

The trouble was he was not enough to drag the team into the playoffs last year, and with an overall weaker team he probably won’t be able to do it this year either. Luongo’s a motivated player, and last year when it was clear that none of the team could be arsed to even try, save for Luongo and Linden, there were definite questions as to whether he would stay in Vancouver.

The overall

Being complete shit has become too comfortable to the Canucks, and as an organization they don’t look like they’re willing to change things. Instead of bringing in a top level manager to sort things out they brought in a novice and then let Steve Tambelini go to Edmonton to be the General Manager there. No matter how bad the team plays they will sell out every game, sell jerseys and baseball caps. It’s Vancouver, it’s Canada and the fact is we’re happy to accept performances that would never get a pass in cities like Toronto, Edmonton and Montreal.

In an American city where hockey plays third fiddle to football and baseball and the team owners can’t count on the team selling out every home game, being so complacent would mean the death of a franchise. The Canucks will survive, but it’s going to be a long season.

If you’ve been living in a cave, or only watching American television, for the last week you know that the Canucks are now out of the playoffs. Another year of dashed hopes and spoiled dreams, and it’s time to start talking about what needs to be done for next year [cbc].

Brendan Morrison and Markus Naslund are both free agents. Trevor Linden is most likely leaving, or if he stays will be little more than a totem on the bench having long past the days when he could drive the team game after game. Roberto Luongo fled town as soon as he could, one of the few players to do the jersey any credit this year.

So what’s the blogosphere say? Find out after the jump.

- Miss 604 was at the last game of the season where the team really showed their heart by giving up and letting Calgary trounce them by 7-1 [m604]. At least Trevor Linden tried, and got feted by the assembled fans.

- Beyond Robson asks the reasonable question “What happened?” [br]. Their answer is good.

- The Canucks Official Fan Blogs have been silent since March with few exceptions, and as you’d guess they’ve been fairly easy going on the team. Mike The Yankee takes the reasonable approach of looking at the cloud’s silver lining [cb]. By that I mean he’s insane, the fact that the team barely missed the playoffs is not a silver lining. This is a team that should have been competing for top in the division, not first amongst the losers. Still if Bush could roll out the Mission Accomplished banner so early in Iraq, I suppose we can start calling the season a success.

- Matthew Good [mg] posted that Vancouver never has really been a hockey town, and that the team needed to rebuild around Luongo. For that he got his mailbox flooded with letters from Canucks fans, until he finally took down the post.

I’ve been receiving a ton of email from Canucks fans lambasting me for everything from my lack of knowledge to the fact that ‘my music sucks’. Normally that wouldn’t bother me too much, but when you start to get emails that claim that Rolling Stone voted you the worst song writer in North America, which is a total fabrication, then you know you’re in for a shit storm that’s best avoided.

- The Blog According to Buzz has a fairly humorous new logo for the Canucks [bab].

- Michael Klassen believes that the Canucks won’t ever win the Stanley Cup, and it’s all your fault [mk].

Originally uploaded by reservoir frog

The Vancouver Canucks are out of the playoffs [cbc]. The math does not lie, there is no way for them to win. There is nothing left to play for except for the remaining scraps of dignity that the position of first amoung the losers would grant.

Optimistic Canucks’ ads on the side of Skytrains aside, nobody really expected the team to win the Stanley Cup this year. We have a goalie, and that’s about it. The team has addressed neither the team’s ongoing need for a top level goal scorer, to replace the players that Bertuzzi and Nausland used to be, nor do they have the win at any cost mentality that took the Oilers to their last trip to the finals.

It was not just that this just was not our year, it was that the last five years haven’t been our year but aside from bringing in Luongo the team has only aged; not in the gaining more experience version of aging, but in the one day closer to retirement version.

The Canucks need to be torn apart and rebuilt. Build it around Luongo. Build it around a new Russian speedster with flair like Bure. This team will never win the Stanley Cup, and believing it will is just a waste of time.

With city council about to spend half a million dollars on new software that will cut down on gang violence and after hours bar incidents [cbc].  While software might stop people being drunk assholes, World of Warcraft stopped me from having a social life for about six months, it’s hardly going to cut down on gang activity at places that aren’t clubs or bars where most of the shootings have occurred.

Here are five other things we could be spending our money on:

5. Turning Robson Street into a Pedestrian Mall ::The Fremont Street Experience is one of the major tourist draws in Las Vegas [wp].  What would be better for the Olympic tourists than being able to experience the same thing on Robson Street?  Granted it would cost more than half a million, but boy would the tourists love it. 

4. Robots, Zombies, Pirates, Ninjas, and Sad Feist ::What just randomly using those words isn’t funny as of itself?  Dammit.  Ah well, at least our SEO went up like 2000%.

3. Destroy Beyond Robson :: Let’s face it Beyond Robson [br] is not only unpatriotic they’re probably all some sort of communists.  I’d say they’re zombies or pirates on top of that, but I’ve already been to that comedy well once today.  Either way I’m sure City Council would be far happier if they bought BR and put someone really really really excited about Vancouver in charge.  Someone uncritical who doesn’t really notice the homeless issue.  Someone like Kent Hurl [tv]. 

2. Buy the Cancuks a goal scorer :: Years, and years go by and we always are short a goal scorer once we get in the playoffs.  Why they figured it would be different this year I have no idea, unless the plan was simply not making the playoffs in which case we’re on track.

1. Inter-dimensional portal technology ::I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and there’s an episode at the start of the third season where she runs away from home and lives in LA where an evil demon dimension is grabbing homeless and directionless youth off the streets of LA and using them as slave labour in their demon dimension.  I would bet good money that Sam Sullivan is trying to find an evil Wiccan right now to start teleporting the Downtown East Side residents to said dimension.  Sound far fetched?  Well now explain how Mayor Wilkins Sullivan got elected again [wp]?

Well that ended up being far more super nerdy than I had hoped.

The CBC [cbc] informed me that the city was celebrating the completion of the Canada Line tunnel today, bringing the most patriotic Skytrain line that much closer to completion.  Here’s five more things that we’re celebrating today.  Please insert sarcastic quotes where appropriate.

5)The Canucks loss to the Blackhawks [cbc]: Face it we’re not a city that’s comfortable with a winning NHL team, and so these overtime losses are making us feel safe.  When the team’s winning we start getting into debates with each other on the Skytrain and in line at the movies about ontology.  Now we no longer have to worry about Anselm and his arguments.

4)The Olympics are coming: Why did we have a two year pre-Olympic celebration and not a two year minus one month pre-Olympic celebration?  Is it just me or do the rest of you feel your very neutrons vibrating with eager anticipation?  If I get much more excited I might dissipate.

3)More Pickton [vs]: I have to pick the first season up on DVD before watching next year’s.

2) Conrad Black is going to jail [gs]: Happy days.  No sarcastic quotation marks needed here.

1) The Canucks again [exn]: They might not be able to beat an NHL team, but boy they can wipe the floor with the Hives.