Sporting Madness

I'll be live-blogging tonight's Game I clash between the Vancouver Canucks and the Chicago Blackhawks, perhaps with some of the other Out of Left Field staff. The puck will drop at 9:00 p.m. Eastern (6:00 p.m. Pacific). The game will be on CBC in Canada and Versus in the United States. A full preview of the series is after the jump. Vancouver - Chicago live blog How they got here: Vancouver swept St. Louis in four games, but the series was closer than it appeared. Every game was a hard-fought battle and the Blues, the league's hottest team over the last couple of months of the regular season, gave Vancouver a run for their money. Conversely, it took Chicago six games to knock off the Calgary Flames, but Games Five and Six were 5-1 and 4-1 blowouts for the Blackhawks. Chicago's had two full off-days to recuperate, so fatigue shouldn't be too much of an issue for them. Vancouver's been off for nine days, which could make the Canucks a little slow out of the gate...

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 ...

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...

The NHL announced today that Anaheim Ducks defenceman Chris Pronger would be suspended for eight games for his stomp on Ryan Kesler of the Vancouver Canucks. Outstanding CKNW and Canucks TV colour man Tom Larscheid nailed it towards the end of the clip, calling it "A deliberate play by Pronger just to stomp on Kesler with his skate." In my mind at least, this was out-and-out dirty, right up there with the infamous Chris Simon on Jarkko Ruutu play. Of course, Simon's a fringe player, so the full book (a 30-game suspension) got thrown at him: Pronger wouldn't even have been suspended without the NHL suspiciously finding a "new angle" after they'd already ruled it was inconclusive. According to Pronger, the league told him Thursday night there would be no suspension, but then re-reviewed the tape on Friday and came up with the new punishment. I don't see how they deemed it inconclusive in the first place: even the original camera angle was far bette...

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...