You have no doubt become aware of this, yet I still feel it necessary to warn you that the hockey team you follow is terrible. Languishing low in the league, Vancouver, despite its stated intention of competing for a playoff spot, seems instead destined to once again offer its fans the cold consolation of a lottery pick.
We at Pucked in the Head appreciate weirdness. Odd scoring plays, in particular, bring us equal parts unbridled joy and unsolicited hate mail. Consequently, we are happily wary to present this, the second installment of Weird Goals. (The inaugural Weird Goals post can be found here.)
Loui Eriksson starts off his Canucks tenure with a bang From horrible trades and season-long injuries to embarrassing contracts and mysterious coaching changes, the Vancouver Canucks have had a rough go of things since gifting the Boston Bruins the 2011 Stanley Cup final. The latest bit of bizarre came on the opening night of 2016-17 against the dirty, rotten, stinkin’ Calgary Flames.
After signing a big off-season free agent contract, Loui Eriksson was making his Canucks debut. Less than ten minutes into the first period, Troy Brouwer drew a penalty; Ryan Miller skated to the bench for an extra attacker, as the Canucks had possession. Eriksson found himself hounded by four — count ’em, four! — Flames, and despite having the delayed penalty on his side, panicked. He threw the puck back to his defenseman, but WAIT! The D were thinking line change and/or attack, so the puck slid the length of the ice and directly into the Vancouver net. Brouwer got credit for the snipe before heading to the box for an ineffective Canucks power play.
Interesting point: after this game, Canucks goalie Ryan Miller had a perfect 1.000 save percentage, and courtesy of a Vancouver shootout win, a 1-0 record. However, he was not credited with a shutout because of Eriksson’s blunder.
Twitter just it up, as you can imagine. BTW, after nine games in Canuck blue and green, this remains Eriksson’s lone goal of the season.
Flames score as Dumba goal as you’ll ever see What the hell, Calgary? You get all these bizarro goals and you’re still a Pacific Division stinker? I mean, sure, you’ve got that one win for Lanny back in ’89, but jeez Louise, you’ve gotta turn all of these awful gimmes into more than one lousy Cup.
Devan Dubnyk has no chance at all when a shot by David Jones goes off Mike Reilly’s stick, then caroms off Matt Dumba’s head into the net.
Marc Bergevin throws the puck into his own net
Who says the San Jose Sharks only have bad luck? Early in this game against the St Louis Blues, Marc Bergevin decides to gift some karma to Mike Ricci et al with a shortstop-worthy flip into the back of his own goal. Gary Suter dumps the puck in; Bergevin gloves it and tries to fling it away from the onrushing Sharks forwards. Instead, it flies past a stunned Roman Turek into the Blues net. Tie game.
Ed Belfour gifts Mike Gartner, 1993 All-Star Game Mike Gartner isn’t supposed to play. An allegedly hungover Ed Belfour probably shouldn’t. Together, they make magic in the first period of the 1993 All-Star Game.
Belfour comes well out of the net to prevent the fastest skater in the league from catching up to an Adam Oates clearing play, and lets the puck through the wickets with hilariously bad form. Gartner, added to the lineup to replace injured Rangers teammate Mark Messier, scores his second goal in 22 seconds to put the Wales Conference up 2-0 early. (He goes on to score two more and earn MVP honours before the game is out; Belfour allows six goals in his 20 minutes of duty.)
Bonus: the 1993 All-Star Game in its entirety. Watch Wayne Gretzky, Ray Bourque, Patrick Roy, Steve Yzerman, Pat Lafontaine, Pavel Bure, Alexander Mogilny and Adam Oates, among others, as the Wales Conference beats the Campbell Conference 16–6. Twenty years ago, the ASG was actually watchable.
Last week, the Vancouver Canucks held a couple of town hall meetings with season ticket holders, in which President Trevor Linden and GM Jim Benning outlined the direction of the team, such as it is, and defended themselves against accusations of general incompetence.
Willie Desjardins, Trevor Linden and Jim Benning appeared together in pre-season pressers, but ol’ Willie has been absent from recent town halls. Photo cribbed from an admittedly poorly-written Reddit subthread.
Notably absent from accounts of this meeting was any discussion of head coach Willie Desjardins. The Canucks bench boss seems to me to be coasting along in the wake of terribleness left by the front office. Lost amid the annoyance of the stupid money given to Derek Dorsett is the fact that Dorsett is getting more ice time than youngster Jake Virtanen, with no benefit to the club at all. Sven Baertschi is only barely ahead of Brandon Prust. Jared McCann is dead even with Adam Cracknell. For an organization that’s prioritizing youth development at the moment, these decisions are incredibly odd, but with Benning flushing assets down the toilet on the waiver wire every week and blundering through trade after trade, nobody seems to pay attention to the coach.
Desjardins is not a tactically strong coach. He was roundly out-coached in last year’s playoffs by Bob Hartley. His stubborn refusal to deploy the Sedins for offensive zone faceoffs to maximize their output, as Alain Vigneault did during his tenure, has cost the club countless scoring opportunities this season.
Desjardins was this regime’s guy. He was the anti-Torts. The one to nurture the kids after a year of neglect. It’s no surprise, then, that odds-makers don’t favour him to be shown the door any time soon. If, though, the Canucks are really serious about making the playoffs every year during this rebuild, he’ll need to be replaced sooner rather than later.
Jacob Markstrom has found a groove since taking over the reins during the Christmas break. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
If you’re one of the fifteen people who regularly attended Abbotsford Heat games, you’re not surprised to learn that this Jacob Markstrom kid can tend goal. See, before he took the Utica Comets to the AHL championship series last season, Markstrom played three full seasons in the Florida Panthers system (with the Rochester Americans and San Antonio Rampage). Despite lacking a nickname of any sort, Jacob Markstrom seemed to have the local boys’ number.
Here is where a thoughtful writer would put in some research to get actual statistics, but I’m going to eschew that process in favour of made-up stuff. And I’ll also throw random nicknames at the wall in hopes something sticks. Jacob took two-two points out of the Valley like no hooded fang’s business. The Man They Call Mister Marley beat the Heat no fewer than 157 out of 158 games at the Abbotsford Sport and Entertainment Centre over a three-year period, and earned no fewer than seven thousand shutouts.
Okay, so numbers aren’t my strong suit. Suffice to say, the boy can play.
I’ve always liked basketball. Back in high school, I spent many an afternoon accruing my mandatory 30 hours (and then some) of volunteer experience running the scoreboard or the shot clock in the McRoberts Secondary gymnasium. Go Strikers. That volunteer work was, I like to think, one of the reasons that my best friend’s dad, when he hired his kid, hired me as well to work on the Vancouver Grizzlies’ stats crew.
I loved that club. I sat court-side for four wonderful, terrible seasons. I watched Stockton and Malone run their pick and roll to perfection right in front of me, I saw Michael Jordan play, and I passed Larry Bird in the hallway. I also exchanged pleasantries with Bryant Reeves, who for all his shortcomings as a basketball player is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.
I watched Sam Mack rain three-pointers, Blue Edwards hit clutch shots, and I nearly punched a hole in the wall when a terrible decision erased a Vancouver win against the Lakers in L.A. Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to know that I once owned the original teal blue Grizzlies road jersey, with who else but Shareef Abdur-Rahim on the back. To the best of my memory, that is the only jersey I have ever purchased that I have later consigned to a donation bin. The Grizzlies, now and forever, can fuck right off. Continue reading Canucks to Celebrate Grizzlies In Cheap Marketing Ploy→
In an age of hyper marketing, intense competition and tightly controlled PR, it’s amazing that truly horrible ideas can still make it past the brainstorming stage. Whether it’s the nightmare of design by committee or just a conflagration of mediocre talents pulling the wool over the eyes of out of touch rich CEOs, we occasionally see awful designs rolled out in an underwhelming explosion of anticlimax. We analyze the Canucks’ latest trip to the cash trough with today’s edition of Somebody Approved This.
The act of going retro is, like, so yesterday.
Still, the Vancouver Canucks will break out the ol’ spaghetti jerseys on February 13 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of no longer wearing these black and orange abominations the opening of Rogers Arena. It’s a great excuse to laugh at the Toronto Maple Leafs, who lost a five-game Conference Finals to those awfully dressed Vancouver Canucks back in 1994, but then again the Leafs will only have to see these damned things once. We of Lotusland will have to see a renewed population of black-and-gold fashion faux pas for years to freaking come.
Pavel Bure and Trevor Linden wore spaghetti well. That doesn’t mean others should be subjected to it. Photos garnered from various interweb searches.
Russell and Jason go with off-season hockey for episode 70: mostly Canucks stuff, but we throw some Brandon Saad and Phil Kessel in there for good measure. Bonus CanCon with Trooper hitting up the outro track.
Introduction
Sofa Surfer Girl by the Orchid Highway
Scars, plasma and exposed dermis, oh my!
Canucks bleeding out
Sell low, buy pretty much nothing
So long Eddie, so long Shawn, so long Juice
Vancouver media and their goldfish attention sp…
Prust is trade bait at the deadline
What about Ryan Miller & the twins?
Brandon Saad gets PAID
Will Phil Kessel finally hit 40 goals?
Three Dressed Up as a Nine by Trooper
Thanks for Listening
Adios, Mr Kassian. May your IQ be always in your favour.
Ex-Canucks forward Zack Kassian is an ugly man. Photo stolen without shame from a Pinterest page devoted to ol’ Zack.
Here’s photographic evidence that Tate Olson indeed plays the game of hockey. He was selected 210th overall by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.
Tate Olson was selected 210th overall by the Vancouver Canucks in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
A tough week for Vancouver sports fans, as the Canucks, Whitecaps and Stealth all lose on home turf. Is there light at the end of the rainy, oil-slicked tunnel?
• Introduction
• Sofa Surfer Girl by the Orchid Highway
• Vancouver Canucks: plosion guards extraordinaires
• Russell sucks at basketball brackets
• The Canucks outperformed expectations
• The Flames deserved the win
• Stats don’t apply to the Calgary Flames
• Call-in shows feature some… interesting people
• Breaking: Willie Desjardins is 114 years old
• Don’t bring a nativity scene onto the ice
• If you don’t like the twins, you’re a bad person
• People still talk trash about Luongo
• The Sediins & Bobby Lu will be in the Hall of Fame
• Russell: Break up the Sedins
• Vrbata-Bonino-Higgins: a great third line
• Refrain: The twins need help
• Help! by the Beatles
Pucked in the Head is proud to welcome Richard Davalos (@QuakesFan84) and his Playoff Beard Diary. For those growing facial hair, we salute you! Just… maybe not for much longer.
Who wants to go to Vegas? Twenty-one years ago the Vancouver Canucks were in this exact position, down three games to one to the Calgary Flames, but that’s right where the similarities end. Unlike 21 years ago the Canucks are the higher seed and get two of the next three at home. Unlike 21 years ago, the Canucks scored two or more goals in every game in the series heading into game 5. Unlike 21 years ago, there was no debate about who would start each game in net.
This year’s Canucks are down to their final chips. They’re staring at the dealer holding a king to their 6 and 5. There’s no choice but to double down and go for broke for a shot at playing one more hand.
I can haz Sportsnet voiceover job now please?
Seriously though, what the hell is Willie Desjardins doing? He’s trying to goad the Flames into chasing the Canucks in the offensive zone when that has never been their style. They sit back and wait for you to shoot at them, then they take the puck, drive into the zone, hold it in deep and make it a hell of a task to get it out. The Canucks are doing the equivalent of chasing cards, hoping that if they just keep making the same bets over and over again, the deck (or shoe, if you like 3+ deck blackjack) will eventually turn and put them back in the positive.
