Wow. It wasn't all that long ago that a certain over-optimistic homer (or former-home-r?) wrote about the Vancouver Canucks making a run at the Northwest Division title. Not only did that fail to materialize, but the opposite happened: they promptly went into a slump and are now on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. To squeeze into the playoffs, the Canucks now likely have to run the table and hope Nashville drops points against either St. Louis or Chicago. The Vancouver Province does a nice job of breaking down the potential scenarios here (except if Chicago and Edmonton both pass the Canucks, they'd finish 11th, not 10th).
Tonight's game against Edmonton could decide things one way or another, and the interesting part is the staggered time zones. The Nashville-St. Louis and Calgary-Minnesota games both start at 8 ET, while the Canucks don't take the ice for another two and a half hours. As the Globe's Matthew Sekeres points out, there will probably be a lot of scoreboard-watching in the dressing room. Regardless of what happens in the other games, though, the Canucks really need to take this one to have a good shot at the playoffs. If both Nashville and Vancouver win, it's not the end of the world: that's postponed until Saturday. What would be much better from a Vancouver perspective would be a victory for the Canucks and a loss by the Predators, which would vault Vancouver back into the final playoff spot.
Unfortunately, the Canucks again have injury issues. The Province's Ben Kuzma tells us that Taylor Pyatt, who's been one of the better forwards recently, will miss the game with a concussion. He'll be replaced by Rick Rypien. Sekeres adds that Matt Pettinger, who's also made a surprisingly positive contribution since being snagged at the trade deadline, is also likely to miss tonight's clash: Jannik Hansen may take his place. On the bright side, the Oilers have their own injury woes: they're missing Kyle Brodziak, Ales Hemsky and Mathieu Garon, so the Canucks will probably only have to deal with Rollie the Goalie.
The thing that's so frustrating about following the Canucks is their highs and lows. One day, they'll put a great 6-2 thrashing on the Flames and look like a team that could actually do some damage in the playoffs. The next game, things will start well and then go completely off the rails. Alanah perfectly nails the frustration that comes with being a Canucks fan these days. "I wouldn’t bet on either of those Vancouver games, other than to say that the Canucks will win one of them FOR SURE—probably Thursday’s against Edmonton—just to keep the pain alive," she writes. That seems like the most likely option, having it come down to the wire and falling just short: it would be completely in character with this season.
A special hockey edition of the Links of the Day:
Canucks:
- Kuzma has another great story referencing Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of my favorite movies of all time. There's some good parallels, too: the Canucks seem to be insisting that they're "not dead yet".
- Sticking with the Province, Jason Botchford has a good piece on Roberto Luongo, and how a superlative performance from him will be crucial to any hopes the Canucks have of success.
- The Hockey News has a pretty funny Top 10 list of Canucks' excuses for missing the playoffs. My favorite? "We haven’t been the same since losing all-star Rory Fitzpatrick."
(Thanks to Alanah for spotting this one).
- Zanstorm has a good game preview up. Despite the Canucks losing 4 of their last five, he's still feeling pretty positive: wish I could share that emotion.
General hockey:
- The guys at Orland Kurtenblog remind Vancouver fans that fans from the rest of Canada (except those from Montreal) are feeling the same pain.
- James Mirtle has a nice post on Ken Hitchcock's selection as head coach of the Canadian World Championships team. Hitch is a pretty good pick in my books as well.
- The Globe's Roy MacGregor on the Sens' latest struggles. Best lines: "Murray candidly admits he has no idea what went so very wrong with this group. No one really does. 'I'm not throwing anybody under buses,' the coach said, while the rest of the city was busy tossing so many players under the bus, that the wheels no longer touched the ground." For some reason, that sounds pretty familiar.
- Neate has a brilliant demolition of Pierre LeBrun's ill-advised piece on sportsnet.ca the other day calling Bobby Nadeau a "Nancy Boy" for letting Jonathan Roy punch him without fighting back. I usually like LeBrun and find him pretty insightful, and he makes some valid points in the column, but there's no reason to start throwing out those kind of terms, and Nadeau is the wrong person to blame. I enjoy the occasional hockey fight myself, but it's never been acceptable to go and just start beating on someone who clearly doesn't want to drop the gloves. Hockey has had a long history of on-ice violence, but that also doesn't justify making it a taboo topic. The world has done some pretty horrible things in the past (say immigrant head taxes or Jim Crow laws, for example), and we don't advocate keeping those just because they used to be enforced.
Showing posts with label Ben Kuzma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Kuzma. Show all posts
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Happy birthday, Mr. Hockey!
Congratulations are in order to Gordie Howe, who turns 80 today. There are some great retrospectives on his career from NHL.com's John McGourty and Shaun P. Roarke, as well as the Canadian Press (via The Hockey News). Howe was my favorite player growing up, even though I never had the privilege of watching him play. I fell in love with the Howe legend from reading about him, particularly the part about his move to the WHA to play with his sons Mark and Marty after the Red Wings decided he was too old. Mostly because of him, I was a diehard Hartford Whalers fan growing up (and still have a Whalers jersey). As Kevin Allen of USA Today points out, one of the best things about Howe was he could do anything.
"Bobby Orr was the most spectacular hockey player I ever witnessed," he writes. "Wayne Gretzky is the sport's most creative offensive star and Mario Lemieux is probably the most dangerous scorer ever to lace up skates. But as extraordinary as these three players were, Gordie Howe simply had more tools in his box. He was as ruthless as he was cunning, as powerful as he was skilled, and as durable as he was dedicated. He was the NHL's most complete player."
There have been many who have written great things about Howe over the years, but one of the best pieces is from another legend, Milt Dunnell of the Toronto Star. I was reading a great collection of his work (appropriately titled "The Best of Milt Dunnell") the other day, and came across a terrific (and strangely prescient) column on Howe's longevity that ran May 10 1963 (17 years before Howe finally hung up the skates in 1980, if you don't count his one-game comeback in 1997 with the IHL's Detroit Vipers to become the only man to play pro hockey in six decades). Here's some excerpts from "He Can't Read the Calendar":
"Away back in the early part of the Fat Fifties, Jack Adams, who was running the Red Wings, used to say: 'You don't have to tell me Howe is great. But you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until Howe is 30,'" Dunnell wrote. "Adams was just like all shinny men — impatient. He couldn't wait for a boy to mature properly. What Adams must have meant was: 'Wait until Howe is 40.' This big switch-shooter, Gordie Howe, is a slow developer. He's 35 already — and you can't even be sure has reached his potential. Wait until he's 50. He'll be holding the Hart trophy in his hamlike hands — sure as CCM makes hockey skates."
Well, Howe didn't quite win the Hart at 50, but he came pretty close. He won the Gary L. Davidson Trophy as the WHA's MVP in 1974 when he was 46 (it was subsequently renamed in his honour), and he led the Houston Aeros to back-to-back championships. He dominated the WHA for most of its existence, played until he was 52, and had a solid final campaign in the NHL, racking up 15 goals and leading the Hartford Whalers into the playoffs. That kind of longevity is amazing, especially given the rough-and-tumble style Howe played. Current Red Wings GM Ken Holland agrees.
"I think Gordie Howe is the greatest hockey player of all time, certainly the greatest power forward of all time," Holland told McGourty. "He was the greatest player in the history of this franchise, and I think that he and Steve Yzerman are without a doubt the two greatest players to wear the Red Wings' uniform."
Think about the other great power forwards in the league's history, and how many of them had to retire early or missed significant amounts of time due to injury. Cam Neely, Eric Lindros, Kevin Stevens and Wendel Clark immediately come to mind, and there are undoubtably many more. Howe was absolutely tough-as-nails, and there's a good reason the "Gordie Howe Hat Trick" is named after him, even if he only recorded it once.
Also, good for Gordie for using his time in the spotlight to address a great wrong: the case of his son, Mark, who is not yet in the Hockey Hall of Fame despite an outstanding career. Gordie called Mark's absence from hockey's most famous shrine an injustice when asked about it by a Detroit reporter.
"Check his record,” Howe said. “He wasn't a troublemaker and he did his job. All his coaches told me that he just doesn't get the credit he deserves. He played on teams that were always first or second, and he led the League in plus-minus several times. He beat everybody by about 20 goals and he was a defenseman. I got mad when they put him on defense because I lost my winger."
Mark started out as a forward, but then converted to defense and was a three-time Norris runner-up (and certainly would have won if his best years hadn't conflicted with those of Paul Coffey). He was great at both ends of the ice: in 1985-86, he scored 24 goals, recorded 82 points, led the league in plus-minus with an amazing +85, and also added 7 shorthanded goals. Over his NHL and WHA career (22 years), he put up 405 goals and 1,246 points. He also is the youngest hockey player ever to win an Olympic gold medal. Bill Fleischman of philadelphiaflyers.com makes an excellent case for Mark's inclusion. As Fleischman points out, one of the main reasons Mark is likely overlooked is because several of his good years came in the WHA. The Hockey Hall of Fame's NHL bias rises to the surface again...
Unfortunately, there are two things in the Howe coverage that are somewhat lacking. Understandably, the NHL doesn't want to talk too much about Howe's WHA days, but it's disappointing that CP barely mentions them. It's also disappointing that there wasn't more coverage of Howe's birthday in the big Canadian papers, other than the CP story (although the Vancouver Province's Ben Kuzma ran a nice Q&A with Howe a few weeks back and the Globe has a cool photo slideshow up today) Props to the NHL for doing a great job with a historic moment for one of their legends, and to American media for picking up on it, but it would have been even better if the Canadian papers had followed their lead: the man defined our national game.
"Bobby Orr was the most spectacular hockey player I ever witnessed," he writes. "Wayne Gretzky is the sport's most creative offensive star and Mario Lemieux is probably the most dangerous scorer ever to lace up skates. But as extraordinary as these three players were, Gordie Howe simply had more tools in his box. He was as ruthless as he was cunning, as powerful as he was skilled, and as durable as he was dedicated. He was the NHL's most complete player."
There have been many who have written great things about Howe over the years, but one of the best pieces is from another legend, Milt Dunnell of the Toronto Star. I was reading a great collection of his work (appropriately titled "The Best of Milt Dunnell") the other day, and came across a terrific (and strangely prescient) column on Howe's longevity that ran May 10 1963 (17 years before Howe finally hung up the skates in 1980, if you don't count his one-game comeback in 1997 with the IHL's Detroit Vipers to become the only man to play pro hockey in six decades). Here's some excerpts from "He Can't Read the Calendar":
"Away back in the early part of the Fat Fifties, Jack Adams, who was running the Red Wings, used to say: 'You don't have to tell me Howe is great. But you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until Howe is 30,'" Dunnell wrote. "Adams was just like all shinny men — impatient. He couldn't wait for a boy to mature properly. What Adams must have meant was: 'Wait until Howe is 40.' This big switch-shooter, Gordie Howe, is a slow developer. He's 35 already — and you can't even be sure has reached his potential. Wait until he's 50. He'll be holding the Hart trophy in his hamlike hands — sure as CCM makes hockey skates."
Well, Howe didn't quite win the Hart at 50, but he came pretty close. He won the Gary L. Davidson Trophy as the WHA's MVP in 1974 when he was 46 (it was subsequently renamed in his honour), and he led the Houston Aeros to back-to-back championships. He dominated the WHA for most of its existence, played until he was 52, and had a solid final campaign in the NHL, racking up 15 goals and leading the Hartford Whalers into the playoffs. That kind of longevity is amazing, especially given the rough-and-tumble style Howe played. Current Red Wings GM Ken Holland agrees.
"I think Gordie Howe is the greatest hockey player of all time, certainly the greatest power forward of all time," Holland told McGourty. "He was the greatest player in the history of this franchise, and I think that he and Steve Yzerman are without a doubt the two greatest players to wear the Red Wings' uniform."
Think about the other great power forwards in the league's history, and how many of them had to retire early or missed significant amounts of time due to injury. Cam Neely, Eric Lindros, Kevin Stevens and Wendel Clark immediately come to mind, and there are undoubtably many more. Howe was absolutely tough-as-nails, and there's a good reason the "Gordie Howe Hat Trick" is named after him, even if he only recorded it once.
Also, good for Gordie for using his time in the spotlight to address a great wrong: the case of his son, Mark, who is not yet in the Hockey Hall of Fame despite an outstanding career. Gordie called Mark's absence from hockey's most famous shrine an injustice when asked about it by a Detroit reporter.
"Check his record,” Howe said. “He wasn't a troublemaker and he did his job. All his coaches told me that he just doesn't get the credit he deserves. He played on teams that were always first or second, and he led the League in plus-minus several times. He beat everybody by about 20 goals and he was a defenseman. I got mad when they put him on defense because I lost my winger."
Mark started out as a forward, but then converted to defense and was a three-time Norris runner-up (and certainly would have won if his best years hadn't conflicted with those of Paul Coffey). He was great at both ends of the ice: in 1985-86, he scored 24 goals, recorded 82 points, led the league in plus-minus with an amazing +85, and also added 7 shorthanded goals. Over his NHL and WHA career (22 years), he put up 405 goals and 1,246 points. He also is the youngest hockey player ever to win an Olympic gold medal. Bill Fleischman of philadelphiaflyers.com makes an excellent case for Mark's inclusion. As Fleischman points out, one of the main reasons Mark is likely overlooked is because several of his good years came in the WHA. The Hockey Hall of Fame's NHL bias rises to the surface again...
Unfortunately, there are two things in the Howe coverage that are somewhat lacking. Understandably, the NHL doesn't want to talk too much about Howe's WHA days, but it's disappointing that CP barely mentions them. It's also disappointing that there wasn't more coverage of Howe's birthday in the big Canadian papers, other than the CP story (although the Vancouver Province's Ben Kuzma ran a nice Q&A with Howe a few weeks back and the Globe has a cool photo slideshow up today) Props to the NHL for doing a great job with a historic moment for one of their legends, and to American media for picking up on it, but it would have been even better if the Canadian papers had followed their lead: the man defined our national game.
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