CrashingTheGoalie

by Ron Spence
There’s been a recent trend: when a player is hit – cleanly by NHL standards – his teammates go after the hitter.
This accounts for many of the NHL’s fighting majors.
Our penal systems are based on deterrence and punishment.
Beating up a player is a punishment, but is it a deterrent?

courtesy of cbc.ca
The Daily Herald’s [...]

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By Bill Heintz

Despite the modest winning streak that includes the shutout against Edmonton, I’m not convinced the Canuck Super Tanker has turned things around.
Certainly we are better than we were, but it could be argued that we were lucky to take two points from Toronto. I haven’t seen the Canucks pinned in their own zone [...]

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“In the old Montreal Forum days,” Ryan Walter said, “it was a small room, you couldn’t believe how small that [dressing] room was.”
“The one thing I think misses with the big dressing rooms is that intimacy…” Walter continued. “So round dressing room, smaller space, more intimate.”

courtesy of canucks.nhl.com
The Vancouver Canucks spared no expense when designing [...]

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The Manitoba Moose have lost their top offensive weapon.
The parent Vancouver Canucks recalled high-scoring Russian winger Sergei Shirokov on Sunday morning. There’s a chance the 23-year-old could play tonight in Vancouver when the Canucks host…the Edmonton Oilers.
Shirokov is Manitoba’s leading scorer after recording four goals and six assists in 10 games after being assigned to [...]

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by Ron Spence
Martin Brodeur holds the NHL record for the most careers wins. As of October 25, 2009, he has 563 Ws, and Patrick Roy is second with 551.
Who is the goalie – who played for the Canucks, Capitals and Penguins – and never won one NHL contest?

Martin Brochu.
He played in 6 games wearing a [...]

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By Bill Heintz
Well, you could start with the mis-use of the plural on Leafs. As every school child and anti-Toronto wag will tell you: it should be the The Leaves.
Okay, how lame.
And it doesn’t even scratch the surface of why we hate the boys in blue and white. To do that, you have to [...]

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by Ron Spence
I watched the game in a liquor establishment – the Fifth St. Bar and Grill – in Victoria.
And, the cliental weren’t kind to Roberto during the first part of the game. It was as though he had been personally letting them down.
This had changed, however, by the end of the contest.
Willie Mitchell’s big [...]

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by Ron Spence
A number of B.C. teams have excelled in hockey.
The Vancouver Millionaires won the Stanley Cup in 1915, and the Victoria Cougars repeated ten years later. The Kimberly Dynamiters won the World Championships in 1937, and the Penticton Vees in 1955. The Trail Smoke Eaters won the Worlds both in 1939 and 1961. And [...]

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by Ron Spence

Senior and minor league hockey have experienced a reversal of fortune over the past eighty years. The B.C. Amateur Hockey Association was formed in 1919 and minor hockey was given a back seat. There were a limited number of covered arenas and it was reasoned that transportation was too slow and expensive for [...]

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by Bill Heintz
Most sports have trash talk.
Football is notorious for it, with D-backs constantly reminding wide receivers about the loose morals of their sisters.
Hockey is much the same. Guys like Sean Avery raised (lowered?) the bar set by guys like Mathew Barnaby a few years back.
On the Canucks we have Kesler and Burrows [...]

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