CrashingTheGoalie

by desertdawg
Well there’s a good question. What indeed is Canucks type hockey?

What is the identity of this team? At the beginning of the season, we were looking at a team like Detroit and saying, well those guys are a classic puck possession type team. How about Anaheim? Typically we see the Ducks as a high energy, truculent bunch that can beat you up, kill the penalty and then score the next goal. San Jose. Maybe the hardest working group of great big talent in the league. Minnesota tonight? A stingier group of guys you won’t find. They don’t give up much.

As a matter of fact, most teams that are playoff bound have some kind of identity. Hell, even Calgary has an identity of a dump chase team that will wear you down with an up-tempo forecheck.

And our boys in blue and green? A couple of years ago, when we were one of the winningest teams in the league after Xmas, the Canucks were a defensively responsible team that, lead by Roberto Luongo, could win the 2-1 and 3-2 games. Last year we looked about the same until the late season bed-pooping.

This year, well it looked like we were going to be a high energy, puck possession team that would gamble a bit and rely on Roberto to bail us out. By the end of November, we were first place in the division and even without Roberto we were beating some pretty good teams.
So what happened?

Well, predictably we started to fade a bit as our backup goaltending was eventually exposed. Jason LaBarbera gave us a brief respite and then suddenly Mats was signed and Roberto came back…and all hell broke loose…or fell apart. It wasn’t just that we were losing, it was how we were losing. We looked tentative, irresponsible and dispirited.

Hardly the team image we were looking to establish.

And so the opening question stands. What is Canuck hockey? And I think that has become the key question as we head into the stretch.

The answer?

Well I know who I’d like them to be. We have enough scorers to score. We have enough tough guys to play tough. We have enough character to be steadfast in the face of adversity. We have enough guys to win.

And I don’t care anymore how they do it. I don’t need a five zip score for us. I just need us to win. And I don’t expect that my sentiments are that out of line with the Canucks fan base.

I’m not panicking, I’m depressed. This team should be better.

So we will have to play our best against a team like the Wild. Like I said, they are stingy, particularly on the road. We are vulnerable. We need to keep our heads against these guys. If you get impatient, they will make you pay. If you sit back, they will attack you all night. We need to hammer them and stay out of the box. We need to play with smart energy. We need to check them all over the ice. We need, we need we need…

To win.

But the first period mystifies me. I am forced to watch the Minnesota feed tonight, CBC being unavailable in the desert on the Centre Ice package. I am used to watching opposition team feeds on CI, but it is well known that the Minney announcers are the worst homers in the league. The first period play by play does nothing to disprove that. I am forced to endure descriptions of the “Sundin twins.”

And of course it’s made worse by the Canucks performance. They pre-game “Keys to the Game” segment mentioned that the Wild would have to weather the storm for the first ten minutes.

Did you see a storm?

We looked like we were trying, the way the high school knob tries to impress the beauty queen. And slobbering all over himself.
But more than anything, we looked cursed. And two to nothing? Well, when you don’t get scoring chances, you don’t get goals. And you don’t get scoring chances unless you go hard to the net. Didn’t see that once, did you? Saw some hits when there was about five minutes left in the period and we did get a brief flurry on the PP. But still, no battles in close.

And with five seconds left, I saw that Mats was interfered with going for the puck. I don’t like these last second penalties that carry over. You get the PP when your legs are coming off intermission. But of course we don’t get the PP. Mats is called for holding.
Cursed, I say. Cursed!

But the boys fight back in the second period. Only the Minney announcers thought that Kesler may have kicked the puck in. What a joke. Read the rules for Gawdsakes. And yes, I would have preferred that they’d scored on the five minute PP, but at least the boys showed some intensity. Late in the period, Roberto makes his best save since coming back sliding quickly across the crease to stone Pierre Marc Bouchard. Check the replay. Beauty! And he’s owned the little French guy since the beginning of the season. It’s the type of save that can turn a game around, a season around…or just get lost in the general miasma that surrounds the Canucks. What’ll it be boys?

Mats takes another ill-timed penalty…cursed???

But again, we show some try on the PK with Burrows, Johnson and Kesler doing the job. Our best PK in some time. We get out of the frame with a 2 to 1 deficit. Don’t look at the Wild’s record when up after two periods. Don’t look at anything, boys. Just claw your way back into it. And we seem to do that, first with a rare Edler goal off of a clean Henrik face-off. And then a shift by the Sedins that is a classic example of hemming a team in their own zone. It’s the kind of inspired shift that I’ve been looking for, for at least two weeks. But we end up back down a goal when Belanger scores against the run of the play.

I’ve watched this team since 1970 and I haven’t seen a lot of regular season games where our resolve and character have been tested like this. After finally tying it, we are down. Again. It can be a killer or a rallying cry.

The Sedins continue to do the job, pressing the Wild in their own zone. And when the Sedins aren’t doing it, the Kesler line is getting scoring chances with just plain hard work. But we need more than two lines going on this team.

Finally we catch a break with Minney’s best (2 ^nd best?) player in the box. Burns takes a tripping penalty and the Canucks just keep hammering away. Going into the dirty zone to score…and it’s a Kesler classic with 15 seconds to go! We are tied. The best point we’ve achieved in weeks. Truly a team effort in this period.

But again. We are cursed. A miserable penalty in OT, and much like the SJ Sharks game, we are robbed of the two points.

The bad news, we lose. Again.

The good? We played a team game. I see a glimmer of hope.

Well, what else am I going to do? I’m a Canuck fan.