CrashingTheGoalie

by desertdawg
The conventional wisdom amongst professional hockey players is that you don’t worry about what other teams are doing, you only worry about what your team does. It’s not how they play. It’s about how we play.
Ahh, but the rest of us…we watch the other scores. If we are blessed with a hockey package, [...]

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by Ron Spence
The Vancouver Canucks have rolled the dice at 38 amateur drafts and have selected almost a goalie per year.
How many of their goalie picks have donned a Canucks’ jersey?
Ten – of the fifty-one goalies who have worn a Canucks’ NHL jersey – and some of those were for only a game or two each [...]

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by desertdawg
For some people it’s Christmas. For many of my Hispanic friends, Easter is the biggest holiday. For most kids, it’s the summer time.
For me, this is the beginning of the best time of the year. Every game means something. Most games have a level of intensity that we haven’t seen since last June. The [...]

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by Ron Spence
A number of blogsites have linked – or quoted – our recent Jason LaBarbera article.
Some have focused on his lack of formal goalie training, others his inconsistency.
But, one question is always asked.
Why did the Canucks keep him and dispatch Curtis Sanford to Manitoba?

Curtis [...]

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by Ron Spence
Jason LaBarbera arrived in Vancouver, played well in four games and poorly in two.  And yesterday he played an excellent game against Dallas.
Vancouver fans have thus viewed a video precis of Jason’s NHL career – sometimes brilliant and always inconsistent. 

courtesy of sportsnet.ca
LaBarbera played for the Portland Winter Hawks – and briefly for the [...]

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by desertdawg
Of course, you understand that playing hockey as the Comeback Kids is not in the game plan. On the other hand, when we were slumping, we weren’t coming back from two goal deficits, we were blowing two goal leads. So given the choice, I guess we’d rather come back from the two goal [...]

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by desertdawg
It wasn’t exactly a remember exactly where you were moment…like say the ‘72 Canada Cup. But the fans in Manitoba haven’t forgotten that this is their team playing tonight in the valley of the sun. And they remember the day they left the Canadian prairie for the big money and bigger promises of the [...]

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Many people in Hamilton – and across Canada – believe that the NHL should relocate one of their floundering franchises to Hamilton.
*****
The Hamilton Tigers website has documented their frustating attempts to reclaim NHL hockey -from the mid-80s until 2006 (Their last post was on October 13, 2006).
I believe that their frustrations – while Mr. Bettman was expanding the NHL [...]

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by desertdawg
St. Louis sent us down the toilet on that mind boggling losing streak. If you recall, the St Lou game about a month ago was a fer-sure gimme, at least that’s the way we played it. We scored pretty much at will and we didn’t have to work for it. And the game was [...]

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by Ron Spence
Vancouver will be playing the Blues tomorrow night, but won’t be facing a familiar adversary.
Manny Legace has played against the Canucks 12 times throughout the years, compiling a 7-5 record. He played with the Red Wings for most of 6 seasons and the Blues for two and a half years.
In his most recent [...]

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