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].

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].