Original Six powerhouses! Nouveau expansion also-rans! And the St Louis Blues!
It’s Pucked in the Head’s 2011-12 Central Division preview – complete with a pre-season chat with Nashville Predators expert Buddy Oakes from Preds on the Glass!.
The off-season may have felt like an eternity, but it was actually several weeks shorter than Vancouver fans are used to. Either way, the Canucks end the wait for meaningful hockey with a Thursday night season opener against the Sidney Crosby-less Pittsburgh Penguins. Pucked in the Head looks at Seven Things that suggest Canuck fans should temper their enthusiasm for a month or so.1. Vancouver has an unusually difficult October schedule. Four of their eleven October games will be played against tough Eastern Conference opposition. Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington and the New York Rangers will all be looking to test themselves against the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners. Add in games against the always-strong Red Wings and the ever-boring Predators, and the Canucks will find easy points hard to come by in the opening month. Continue reading 04 Oct 2011 – Seven Reasons the Canucks Will Start Slowly→
Update: At 11:05 on Labour Day, 5 September 2011, the women from the Longest Game for CF wrapped up their Guinness World Record longest hockey game in history. They surpassed the previous record – see #3 below – by 65 minutes. Congratulations to everyone involved!
1. Between August 26 and September 5, 2011, 40 women in Burnaby, British Columbia will break the Guinness World Record by playing the longest continuous hockey game in history. The brainchild of Val Skelly, the Longest Game is an homage to a friend, Lucia Tavano, who died of CF at the age of 27. They’re raising awareness and funds for Cystic Fibrosis research and encouraging people to become organ donors as well. See below for some very sobering facts about CF. Their website is www.longestgame4cf.com. This first picture shows Katrina Dauncey making a save in the 105th hour – at this point, she had personally put in more than 46 hours on the ice. Continue reading 01 Sep 2011 – Longest Game for CF→
From August 26th to September 5th, 2011, an amazing group of forty women will be playing hockey continuously in an attempt to set the Guinness world record for the longest hockey game ever played. The record will be broken around 10:00am on Labour Day.
We challenge you to get down to Burnaby 8-Rinks and, whether it be with your wallet, your time or just your voice, contribute to this great event. For more information, why not read our Seven Things about the Longest Game article as you listen?
Over a month after the Boston Bruins quite literally broke the Vancouver Canucks’ back – well, okay, one of their backs, anyway – Chris Withers is still bitter about the whole thing. We decided to get together to shoot the breeze anyway.
After nearly a month of NHL free agency, over one BILLION dollars has been handed out to 162 players this off season (thank you, capgeek.com), and (apologies to Kyle Wellwood) all but the dregs of this weak free agent pool have been snapped up. Because all things must, inevitably, be reduced to a competition in the world of sport, here are the seven winners of this year’s off-season. Continue reading 07 Aug 2011 – Off-Season Winners→
Despite a dearth of true talent under the Unrestricted Free Agent column heading, the 2011 off-season has brought a free agent spending spree like no other upon the NHL. (Be confident, true believers, Pucked in the Head is hard at work on a Seven Things about the Free Agent Firesale column. Well, maybe not ‘hard’ – and ‘work’ is a strong word – but trust me, we’re talking big game about maybe hashing something out over beer sometime before training camp. Or not, whatever.) Most agree that the New York Rangers were the undisputed winner, signing the cream of the crop Brad Richards to a nine-year, $60 million deal. And who’s to argue with Glen Sather, considering his wonderful track record with signing UFAs to big dollar contracts?
Well, us, that’s who. Since taking over the Blueshirts, the guy’s been an absolute disaster on July 1.
1.Scott Gomez had scored an average of 64 points per year with the New Jersey Devils in the first seven years of his career, winning the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year and two Stanley Cups along the way. He turned that consistent, tier-two play into a first rate deal on Free Agent Day in 2007. Slats rewarded him with big bucks, $51.5 million over seven years. Gomez responded with an average of… you guess it, 64 points over the first two years of the contract. Despite giving the Rangers precisely what they had paid for, fans reacted poorly – in 2009, Gomez was traded to the Montreal Canadiens for a cricket bat, three buckets of fried chicken and a box of chewing tobacco. Continue reading 05 July 2011 – Slats and the Never-Ending Ranger Shitshow→
Sadly, hooligans used the Stanley Cup final as an excuse to go apeshit in Vancouver’s downtown core. Vandalism, arson, looting and assorted acts of violence have stained our beautiful city. A very small group of Neanderthals went out of their way to mimic the riots of 1994 — these “people” (and I use that word loosely) have no connection with hockey whatsoever. Real Vancouverites, hockey fans or otherwise, are disgusted by these acts, and embarrassed that a wonderful run of great hockey has now been marred, even overshadowed by this ferret dung in loose pants posing as Canucks fans.
And now, on to the hockey.
1. Congratulations to the Boston Bruins for winning their first Stanley Cup in 39 years. Sure, we’d love to see a city north of 49 win it all, but if it’s not going to happen, the Bruins are as good as it gets. The Canadian content on the Boston roster outstrips even that of the Blackhawks and Flyers last year. It’s the third time in four years an Original Six team takes home hockey’s holy grail. A great achievement for this team of pluggers who virtually nobody chose to outskate the skilled Canucks. There were five Bruins teams to make the finals since 72 – guys like Cam Neely, Ray Bourque and Andy Moog weren’t able to win it all in Boston. Now names like Brad Marchand and Shawn Thornton will go down in Bruins lore beside Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. That sounds like a sarcastic comment, but it’s not. I’m honestly impressed by the sheer strength of team play that the Bruins put together this year. On paper they’re a decent team. On the ice, they’re quite literally world-beaters. Continue reading 16 June 2011 – A Black & Gold Championship, Stating the Obvious and Going out on Top→
Vancouver fans have a reputation around North America for being obnoxious. Sadly, I actually met a group of those jerks at the Rogers Arena game six viewing party on 13 June. They were lewd, lowbrow, and once Boston put the game out of reach, threatening. If all Vancouver fans were like them, I wouldn’t want the Canucks to win the Cup, either. They joked about starting a riot if the Canucks lost, and swore a blue streak – loudly – despite the presence of kids and seniors. This group of young men and women – of an ethnicity that I will not mention – were, and are, an embarrassment to their families and to Vancouver as a whole. Shame on you, you selfish sacks of crap. Shame.
On the other side, I’ve had the luck to meet plenty of fans of these Canucks who are decent folk partying it up in support of their team. They deserve a championship, and I truly believe in the next few years they will get one. Here are seven of them:
1. Joe wears a Flying V jersey and some of the most vibrant face paint in the city.
The off-season may have felt like an eternity, but it was actually several weeks shorter than Vancouver fans are used to. Either way, the Canucks end the wait for meaningful hockey with a Thursday night season opener against the Sidney Crosby-less Pittsburgh Penguins. Pucked in the Head looks at Seven Things that suggest Canuck fans should temper their enthusiasm for a month or so.1. Vancouver has an unusually difficult October schedule. Four of their eleven October games will be played against tough Eastern Conference opposition. Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington and the New York Rangers will all be looking to test themselves against the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners. Add in games against the always-strong Red Wings and the ever-boring Predators, and the Canucks will find easy points hard to come by in the opening month. 
1. Between August 26 and September 5, 2011, 40 women in Burnaby, British Columbia will break the Guinness World Record by playing the longest continuous hockey game in history. The brainchild of Val Skelly, the Longest Game is an homage to a friend, Lucia Tavano, who died of CF at the age of 27. They’re raising awareness and funds for Cystic Fibrosis research and encouraging people to become organ donors as well. See below for some very sobering facts about CF. Their website is 
Despite a dearth of true talent under the Unrestricted Free Agent column heading, the 2011 off-season has brought a free agent spending spree like no other upon the NHL. (Be confident, true believers, Pucked in the Head is hard at work on a Seven Things about the Free Agent Firesale column. Well, maybe not ‘hard’ – and ‘work’ is a strong word – but trust me, we’re talking big game about maybe hashing something out over beer sometime before training camp. Or not, whatever.) Most agree that the New York Rangers were the undisputed winner, signing the cream of the crop Brad Richards to a nine-year, $60 million deal. And who’s to argue with Glen Sather, considering his wonderful track record with signing UFAs to big dollar contracts?
1. Congratulations to the Boston Bruins for winning their first Stanley Cup in 39 years. Sure, we’d love to see a city north of 49 win it all, but if it’s not going to happen, the Bruins are as good as it gets. The Canadian content on the Boston roster outstrips even that of the Blackhawks and Flyers last year. It’s the third time in four years an Original Six team takes home hockey’s holy grail. A great achievement for this team of pluggers who virtually nobody chose to outskate the skilled Canucks. There were five Bruins teams to make the finals since 72 – guys like Cam Neely, Ray Bourque and Andy Moog weren’t able to win it all in Boston. Now names like Brad Marchand and Shawn Thornton will go down in Bruins lore beside Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. That sounds like a sarcastic comment, but it’s not. I’m honestly impressed by the sheer strength of team play that the Bruins put together this year. On paper they’re a decent team. On the ice, they’re quite literally world-beaters. 