Sunday, October 20, 2013 Lets take a look Well, here we are, a new season. At the end of the 2013 season Mike Gillis had said repeatedly that the team was having a reset ... he was going to retain the teams veteran core while introducing bigger, stronger, and younger talent. Ok, so lets take a look at how thats going. I think the first huge shock to all Canuck fans was the draft day trade of Schneids. Im sure I wasnt the only one sitting there watching it happen with my mouth hanging open in disbelief. No doubt Luongo was doing the very same thing. All season he had been preparing to move on ... he was going to be traded and Schneider would be our #1 goalie. We all heard it over and over all through the last season about how Cory was the new face of the Canucks, hes our #1, etc etc etc. Then it kind of turned out that we actually had two #1 goalies ... BL had 18 games, Schneids had 28, and they split 2. So ya ... a bit of a shock when Schneids was gone. Many, many, MANY fans got buzzing and speculating about whether BL would be back at all or just get fed up with the whole thing and ditch it. I maintained from the start that regardless what happened, Luongo is a professional. He is a great goalie. No goalie is on his game 100% of the time, not him, not Schneider, not anyone. Hes got a reputation as one of the best in the league and hes not about to throw that away. I knew he would be back and hed give us all hes got and Im pleased (tho not surprised) to see I was right. So back to the bigger, stronger and younger. Since the end of the last season we have seen some changes. Mason Raymond - gone (youre welcome Toronto, youll understand soon enough). Max LaPierre - gone (currently on suspension for 5 games for boarding Boyle) ... he was perty to look at but we need more than that. Pinizotto - gone (to the Panthers I think ... who knows, who cares). Incoming we have: Eddie Lack aka Stork as BLs backup ... played one, won it, so far so good. Mike Santorelli - C - we needed another centre, his faceoff % looks ok, hes not a huge guy but useful so far Brad Richardson - RW - again, not a huge guy, hes had a couple of goals and hasnt done anything stupid yet Jordan Schroeder - C - yes, hes a C, and he shoots right, both good things. Hes got decent hands and hes pretty quick, also both good. Hes not much taller than me, and he seems to break quite easily. Started the season broken, played 3 games and now hes broken again. Ryan Stanton - D - hes a decent sized guy and so far seems like a good fit. Hes quick and plays smart, so far hes doing a great job. We have a few other new guys, plus some that were new to us last season but didnt do much to impress, whether it was lack of time or opportunity I dont know. Bo Horvat was part of the Schneider deal on draft day. Hes only 18 so he has a ways to go, for now hes back in the juniors. Kellan Lain did ok in the pre-season, really tall guy ... like 66 ... hes on the Comets for now. Also back to the minors weve got Frank Corrado (D), Jeremy Welsh (C), Hunter Shinkaruk (F). We got Jason Garrison last year and I love him! Hes a reasonably big guy, has a super rocket of a shot and does all the things we need him to do. Fantastic! Another new guy we got this year is our new coach, John Tortorella. I liked Vinny, I really did, but I do think we needed a change. I think he was losing his effectiveness on this particular team and they were getting lax. I liked Torts from what Id seen of him with the Rangers, hes got the reputation of speaking his mind and not taking any crap. So far hes spent a lot of his time just getting to know our guys, how they play, what they do or dont do, how he can use each of them to the teams advantage. Hes been on Keslers tail constantly ... pushing him hard to get all he can out of him to force him back into beast mode. I think its starting to work. Kes spent the first few games doing a lot of skating and not a whole lot of anything else. In the most recent games hes bumped his game up a notch each time, and seeing results. The twins are also playing differently. Traditionally they played all the power plays but no penalty killing. Theyre on the pk now and seeming to like it. In interviews Henrik has said that its better to play consistently through every part of the game without long spans of sitting on the bench (sounds logical) so they dont cool down and have to re-warm up. Unfortunately they havent had a steady teammate on their first line yet ... Burrows got hurt in game 1 and will be out for a few weeks. Kass got suspended a few games so he just got back last weekend. Torts has been shuffling people around to see who works best together, sometimes splitting the twins up to make them shake a leg and perform better. Torts showed us a bit of his fire in game 1 ... the other teams coach was yelling at our guys so he had to yell back at him to get him to shut up. My guys are shooting from everywhere and catching more rebounds. Theyre not playing like girls anymore and there are signs that the beast is back. Hopefully we wont have a whole lot more suspensions or injuries, since the geniuses who run the show decided to move our farm team to Utica, NY. Already weve seen that if we need a guy NOW to fill a space we are S.O.L. Takes a full day just to get the guy here. Nice. ...... morons ....... So now for MY big news. I am now a season ticket holder! I have half-season tickets for this season! In July we went to Rogers arena for their Summer Summit. A huge buffet dinner with brisket, salmon, corn on the cob, salads galore, bread, veggies, pasta ...... mm MM mm! Among the food servers there was John Garrett and Dan Murphy ... I had to get a picture with each of them and told them that I call them two Johns and a side of Murph. It was pretty cool to meet them. After the food there was a presentation where we heard from Torts, Gillis, Vic de Bonis, and some NHL dude. They talked about the upcoming season, took a few questions, then brought out Pavel Buré to announce that they would be raising his number to the rafters at a game this fall. All in all a good day. Soon after that I went to Rogers Arena to select my seats for the upcoming season, got exactly the ones I wanted! Id been coveting these seats all last season so Im super excited to finally have them. I got section 313 (in the corner, way up near the back: facing the bench with Canucks attacking my direction twice). Centre seats in the row so nobody is climbing over me through the game ... once Im there I dont budge until the game is over. Besides the required jumping up and cheering, of course. So ... here we go headfirst into a new season ... I went to the season opener, Ill be at the Buré game, the season closer, and a whole bunch in between. Looking forward to every one of them. Go Canucks Go!!!
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 20:52:01 +0000
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