Articles, Hockey

Canadians have it pretty good

Fred Perry is the last British-born tennis player to win Wimbledon. Check out the pants!

If you think it’s been a long time since a Canadian team hoisted the Stanley Cup, try being a British tennis fan.

In case you’re counting, the last time the Cup was won by a team north of the 49th parallel was in 1993, when Patrick Roy’s Montreal Canadiens beat Gretzky and the LA Kings in five games. A lot of people consider the Stanley Cup, and even hockey as a game, to be incontrovertibly Canadian, but since the Habs won 19 years ago, every championship series has gone to a US-based team. The Ottawa Senators, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and the Vancouver Canucks (twice) have appeared in finals since then, but northern fans have gone into the summer empty-handed and broken-hearted each time.

So, wah. The Brits haven’t celebrated a hometown men’s singles hero on Centre Court since the Great Frickin’ Depression. How long ago was that? Players wore PANTS during matches.

Continue reading Canadians have it pretty good →

Players, Soccer

Peter Vagenas

Panayiotis Alexiou “Peter” Vagenas
Midfielder – CD Chivas USA
Born February 6, 1978 in Pasadena, CA

Nicknames: Pasadena Pete; Passback Pete; That Guy The Whitecaps Inexplicably Let “Mentor” Gershon Koffie

Peter Vagenas, now in his 13th season in Major League Soccer, is a player commonly described as “experienced”. This is code for “old” and “often doesn’t get his contract renewed”. Continue reading Peter Vagenas →

Articles, Hockey

It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood

It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood.

Things are looking up for the Canucks. Oh, I know what you’re thinking:

But but but but BUT they’ll miss Sami Salo’s calming influence on the blueline, and after another off-season surgery the jury’s still out on whether Ryan Kesler will ever reassume his role as a dominant two-way player, and Mike Gillis is shopping the heck out of future Hall of Fame goaltender Roberto Luongo so who knows what we’ll actually see out of that deal, and Zack Kassian is still a long ways from proving he can replace the offensive upside of Cody Hodgson, and we still haven’t answered the departure of Christian Ehrhoff LAST off-season, and it’s unknown whether Daniel Sedin has truly recovered from the concussion that so demolished the squad’s confidence going into the playoffs, and the city of Vancouver is still chock full of fair-weather “fans” who take more pride in slamming the home team than in supporting them through the mini-slumps that have occasionally blotted an otherwise remarkable record the past couple of seasons! Continue reading It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood →

Articles, Hockey

Whitecaps Cough Up The Cup

The soccer gods, as they often like to do during the Voyageurs Cup tournament, were having a laugh yesterday. One of them devised the following scenario:

First, make the busiest part of the Whitecaps schedule coincide with two different Cup competitions, ensuring they either have to rotate the squad (which isn’t all that deep) or play tired. Second, have Toronto FC lose over a quarter of their league games consecutively to start the year, ensuring they are out of playoff contention and have nothing else to play for. Third, have Toronto somehow squeak past Montreal to get into the finals to face Vancouver. Fourth, have the Whitecaps play uninspired soccer. OK, number four definitely wasn’t the soccer gods’ fault, but the result, a 2-1 aggregate loss to Toronto, will still seem unfair to Vancouver soccer fans. This was to be our year, and it all went wrong.

After putting in a largely uninspired second leg in the Canadian championship, Eric Hassli & the Whitecaps probably should have been forced to endure the long walk of shame back to Vancouver instead of a comfy cross-country flight.

Continue reading Whitecaps Cough Up The Cup →

Articles, Hockey

A Voyageurs Cup Primer

Are you still upset about the Vancouver Canucks early exit from the Stanley Cup playoffs? Do you like sporting events? How about teams from Vancouver?? Then you, good reader, are in luck, for that playoff-sized hole in your heart is about to be filled with MORE PLAYOFFS! Tonight, the Vancouver Whitecaps will hope to steal some of the Canucks’ audience as they begin their Canadian Championship campaign against FC Edmonton. Continue reading A Voyageurs Cup Primer →

Articles, Hockey

It’s time to Harperize the NHL

Marian Hossa was severely concussed by a late hit by Phoenix Coyote forward Raffi Torres. Torres received a 25-game suspension. This image was gratuitously stolen from the interweb.

The NHL’s justice system is broken. It’s gotten so bad that a lengthy suspension to a career predator who may have ended the season of a superstar is seen as laughable because of the suspensions that have gone before (or in the case of Shea Weber, the ones that have not gone before). Despite much acclaim early in the season, Brendan Shanahan has now clearly shown that, when the games really matter, he’s no better at meting out punishment than his predecessor, Colin “My Son Plays for the Bruins So I Won’t Suspend Bruins and Miraculously They Just Won the Cup How About That” Campbell. If the NHL wants to regain any measure of credibility it needs to look to (and I’m holding my nose as I type this) the Conservative Party of Canada. It needs to establish clear and consistent rules (not guidelines, rules) for what constitutes a suspension and the length of that suspension. It needs to establish mandatory minimums.

Continue reading It’s time to Harperize the NHL →

Articles, Hockey

Pens force a game 6

Before I say anything else, the pic of the Flyers bench below was stolen unceremoniously from the Puck Doctors. You oughtta surf their site, yo.

The big, bad Flyers have lost two straight games to... THESE GUYS?!?!?!

All right. The Pittsburgh Penguins have dodged two bullets now, coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the first round to force a game six. Game four was a laugher – Philly wasn’t even in the building, and the Pens had something to prove. They scored at will, putting five pucks past each of the Flyer goalies for a 10-3 win.
Continue reading Pens force a game 6 →

Articles, Hockey

Canucks discussion, part 372

Jason: I’ll be very disappointed if the Canucks can’t gut out game four, at least.

Chris: If they lose, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Craig MacTavish coaching next year.

Jason: If he can get Kesler to play to his potential, bring him on. I’m far more disappointed in Kes than I am in AV. I mean, is he still hurt? If so, he was selfish not to sit longer at the start of the year. Is he pissed at V? Then he’s being an unprofessional baby.

Continue reading Canucks discussion, part 372 →

Uncategorized

A royal pain in the arse – Kings go up 2-0

The Canucks host the Kings in round one
Vancouver Canucks Australia came up with some great playoff banners!

Final exam at UBC tomorrow, otherwise I’d write up the wheat thresher that is the LA Kings special team attack.

Just two observations:
1) Both games at Rogers Arena featured massive defensive zone giveaways by Alex Edler that wound up giving the Kings a goal. Something’s wrong with this kid. Injury? Relationship trouble? Lupus?
2) Roberto Luongo is just about the only guy in blue who cannot be blamed one whit for Vancouver being down two-bagel. (Anyone who tries to blame him either hasn’t watched the games, doesn’t know a thing about hockey, or both.)

Articles

2012 Playoffs – Day One – Ref You Suck! edition

Ref, You Suck!
We dedicate the Day One blog to the fine folks at Ref You Suck!

The 2012 playoffs are under way, and I’d like to congratulate officiating crews on and off the ice for kicking things off with a bang. Zebras in all three games on day one were awful, and Brendan Shanahan made complete his cold-water shrinkage from pre-season promises to trade in the NHL Wheel of Justice for consistent punishment across the league.

Before you think this is a partisan rant about the Vancouver Canucks getting jobbed of game one against the Los Angeles Kings, I’d like to proffer this: the Kings were by far the better team Wednesday night, and if not for the early heroics of Roberto Luongo, would have been in a 3-0 or 4-0 position long before calls became an issue. Also, the royal men from SoCal were flogged by a couple of questionable whistles too – I am under no delusions that Vancouver deserved that first game. Refs in Vancouver, Nashville and Pittsburgh were way too visible on the first night. Even the affable Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock commented on it during an in-game interview with Brian Engblom:

Continue reading 2012 Playoffs – Day One – Ref You Suck! edition →

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