Sporting Madness

Photo: Trevor Linden celebrates his game-winning (and series-clinching) goal against Dallas in the 2007 playoffs (Photo from Matt Gunn's blog ). The TEAM 1040's Jeff Paterson announced tonight on his blog at the Georgia Strait 's website that Canuck forward Trevor Linden will offically announce his retirement at a press conference tomorrow, 20 years to the day after he was drafted secondoverall in the 1988 NHL Draft by the Canucks (behind only Mike Modano). It's somewhat fitting that he played such a key role in knocking Modano and his ilk out of the playoffs last year. This retirement was perhaps inevitable, especially after Alain Vigneault's contract to coach the Canucks was extended. There have been several suggestions [Brad Ziemer, Vancouver Sun ] of Vigneault-Linden disagreements over the last couple of years, especially when Vigneault continued to inexplicably bench Linden in favour of inferior players like Byron Ritchie, Mike Brown and Jeff Cowan. Linden wa...

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...