Sporting Madness

The stage is set for a classic showdown in the Windy City tonight between the Vancouver Canucks and the Chicago Blackhawks at 8 P.M. Eastern. I'll be live-blogging it here, perhaps with some of the other Out of Left Field staff if they're able to make it. It's been a great series so far, with all of the games quite even and some tremendous play on both sides. So far, it's shaken out pretty much as I figured from my series preview ; the teams' forwards and defenders have pretty much canceled each other out at even strength, with many of the key goals coming on the power play. However, there is some attrition on the Canucks' lineup; Sami Salo , one of the team's top defencemen, and Pavol Demitra , a key part of the Canucks' secondary scoring, are both expected to miss tonight's game due to injuries. Salo was also out for Game Three, but the Canucks pulled it off without him. Probably the biggest question is which Roberto Luongo will show up for the C...

I haven't done a GBU post in a while, and it's also been a while since I've written about the Canucks, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone after attending last night's win over the L.A. Kings Thursday [ Jason Botchford , The Vancouver Province ]. The score: Canucks 1, Kings 0 . How I saw it: In person. The Good: -Roberto Luongo: Luongo certainly looks back in form these days. After standing on his head to steal a win against the Flames Tuesday [ Nucks Misconduct ], he was solid against an offensively talented L.A. team. He received considerably more defensive support from the rest of the team Thursday than he had against Calgary, but he still had to make several spectacular saves and didn't get a lot of offensive backing. He was named the game's first star, and was a deserving selection. -Ryan Kesler: Kesler was selected as the team's season MVP before the game, and he justified his selection with some solid play Thursday night. He was ...

I figured that 12-6-2 start was too good to be true. According to Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun , Roberto Luongo has left the Canucks-Penguins game with "what appears to be a serious left groin injury." As Neate wrote, "I never saw an entire team get helped off the ice before!" Sean Zandberg doesn't think it's too bad , though, because of the on-air reports. The Canucks can go a few games without Luongo, but he really is what makes this team anything more than mediocre. If he's gone for a long period, they may have trouble even making the playoffs. We'll have to wait and see.

Well, the Canucks continued their slide right out of the playoffs yesterday, losing their sixth game of the last seven to the Edmonton Oilers. Combined with Nashville's earlier win over the St. Louis Blues, the loss meant that Vancouver is now eliminated from playoff contention. Every suspicious death requires a post-mortem examination, so here's my take on the anatomy of a collapse. Head: Dave Nonis As James Mirtle wrote today , one of the big problems with this team was how they were built and the almost-complete lack of scoring depth. Responsibility for that has to fall on the GM's desk. Granted, he hasn't had all that much room to work so far, and has made some nice moves (Luongo, Willie Mitchell and Aaron Miller come to mind), but he hasn't done much of anything to improve the offense. Matt Pettinger was a decent trade-deadline pickup, and may be able to contribute offensively next season, but he isn't the whole solution. Nonis' draft record is also spo...

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 probabl...

Funnily enough, the Canucks have kept up their string of incomprehensible play lately. Things were looking bleak around the trade deadline while the team was hovering on the playoff bubble, and some demands for the head of general manager Dave Nonis were even heard after he failed to do anything more significant than swapping Matts. The team promptly continued their slump, scoring only five times in three games and recording only 10 shots against woeful Chicago, which captain Markus Naslund accurately described as "embarrassing." Since then, they've put up some better results, are now inside the playoff picture looking out instead of the converse, and could take the Northwest Division lead tonight with a win over Minnesota. It's hard to tell if this string of results flows from better plays or merely better bounces, though. Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun nailed it after the Canucks scraped out a win against Dallas last Saturday. "Seventy-two games into th...

As those who don't live under rocks (or south of the 49th parallel) assuredly know already, Tuesday was the NHL trade deadline. They should go ahead and declare it a national holiday already: it makes much more sense than "Family Day", and everyone knows no self-respecting Canadian actually got any work done during the day(particularly because TSN streamed their trade deadline coverage online and got over a million streaming viewers ). In fact, James Duthie referred to the day as " Canada's Unofficial National Holiday. " Anyways, plenty of interesting deadline deals went down. Far better minds than I, including Stephen Brunt , Tim Wharnsby and James Mirtle , have extensively analyzed what went down. There's one team that I thought deserved special attention for their moves, though: the always-dangerous Colorado Avalanche, who added Peter Forsberg, Adam Foote and Ruslan Salei, but didn't even make Wharnsby's list of deadline winners . The Forsber...

Apologies for the lack of updates over the last few days: a combination of my computer dying (or at least suffering serious injury) and the craziness associated with Christmas meant that I wasn't able to find the time to sit down and hammer out a post. Anyways, in step with the many pundits who have traversed the road before me(such as Ben Knight and my own father ), here's my shot at offering symbolic Christmas presents to those I write about. Hockey: -To Roberto Luongo : A trophy case for those he should collect later this year. Luongo narrowly lost out to Sidney Crosby and Martin Brodeur in the Hart and Vezina Trophy races last year, but is having a better season than either to this point. He also dominated their head-to-head battles, stopping Crosby twice on late breakaways and shutting out Brodeur's New Jersey Devils in a 5-0 rout. As the Vancouver Province 's Ed Willes pointed out in an insightful column yesterday, "Luongo, at this moment, is the best play...

Lots of news going on at the moment: here's the highlights. Hockey Flapping in the breeze The Dallas Stars apparently think Roberto Luongo's equipment is controversial. According to Grant Kerr of the Globe and Mail , Marty Turco and Mike Smith both took to the practice ice this morning wearing exaggerated cardboard flaps to question the flaps on Luongo's pads that supposedly extend wider than the maximum width permitted by the league. This surprised me a bit, as Luongo isn't one of the goalies regularly mentioned in the same paragraph as bulky equipment, unlike a certain Stanley Cup-winning netminder . It will be interesting to see if anyone at league HQ takes notice. Related: Alanah's take on the issue. Simon's attempt to save himself According to a Roy MacGregor piece in today's Globe , Chris Simon is planning to appeal his 30-game suspension. "I don't think it was fair," Simon told MacGregor. "I'm not a complainer. I've never ...

The 5-0 thrashing Roberto Luongo and the Canucks put on Martin Brodeur and the Devils on Tuesday was one of the more impressive performances I've seen this year. It becomes even more remarkable considering the context: the Devils had won 11 of their previous 14 games, while the Canucks went 3-3-2 in a tough eight-game stretch that had them hitting the road, returning home for a single game, and going back out on the road. Luongo had also missed the previous four games with sore ribs, so some rust might have been expected, especially against his main rival for the Olympic goaltending job (who had gone 11-1-1 in his last 13 starts with a 1.68 GAA). Perhaps some sour grapes were involved as well, as Brodeur controversially won the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender over Luongo last year. Luongo was only 4-13 against Brodeur going into the game (although all of those games were when Luongo was playing with a terrible Florida team and Brodeur was with a very good New Jer...

It came out today that Canucks’ centre Brendan Morrison will miss up to 12 weeks after undergoing wrist surgery. This is merely the latest injury misfortune to strike Vancouver, as they've spent plenty of time this year without three of their top defencemen (Sami Salo and Lukas Krajicek, who have returned to the lineup, and Kevin Bieksa, who's still out) and their number-one goaltender (Roberto Luongo, slated to return in tomorrow's game against the New Jersey Devils). Yet, despite the rash of injuries to top players, they've turned in quite a successful season so far: their 38 points are good enough that they're tied with the Minnesota Wild for first in the Northwest Division, and sit fifth overall in the Western Conference. A large part of their success so far has come from the stellar performances turned in by the younger players they've called up to patch the holes: Alex Edler and Luc Bourdon did a terrific job filling in on defence (see Ben Kuzma's c...

The Vancouver Canucks lost a disappointing game 4-2 to the Los Angeles Kings Monday night. There were many problems with the Canucks ' play during the game, particularly on the defensive side where former King Aaron Miller looked especially vulnerable. However, more worrisome for Canucks ' fans were the troubling events prior to the game. Star goaltender Roberto Luongo stayed in the treatment room after Saturday's loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, sparking rumours that he might be injured. He was scheduled to start Monday's game against the Kings, but pulled himself partway through the warmup , citing sore ribs. A seismic wave of fear was quickly felt throughout the Canuck community, as Luongo probably means more to this franchise than just about any other player does to any NHL team. Vancouver Province hockey reporter Gord McIntyre described the repercussions quite well in his post-game story . "It was the biggest shock since Bette Midler's understudy took...