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...

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...