5 posts tagged “canucks vs red wings”

He wanted to get his team going. He said he was going to take care of me. I was ready for him. I asked him how his potato farm was doing. He probably likes the french fries the most because he's a little chubby.

(- Alex Burrows talking about his run-in with Red Wings tough guy Aaron Downey during the pre-game warmup. Downey grew up on a potato farm.)

They came, they were all injured, they couldn't conquer.

That was the battlecry of the Detroit Red Wings Saturday against Vancouver.

Well, not really.

I don't have much comments...

• The refs were such Nazis tonight, especially after the pre-game festivities of Nuckies and Wingers chirping at each other, while Zetterberg and Sedin (the two Henriks?) were discussing the Academy Awards (Cherry's guess, not mine). Everytime a Canuck got close to a Red Wing, they blow a whistle to penalize a Canuck. W. T. FUCK.
  
• Edler scores.
• Salo scores.
• Finally. The much needed offense from the defense. Sami Salo has been gaining his offensive confidence back lately. The powerplay is looking much greener now that he has that confidence back. Alex Edler has been on such a roll lately and is finally (hopefully) developing his offensive game.
• Kevin Bieksa is slowly, but surely, starting to take chances offensively, too. That's what we want to see.
• Although Markus Naslund and the Sedin Twins did not actually score a goal, they had a better game tonight than they did against Nashville. Man. They had this nice 3 on 1? 3 on 2 chance in the 3rd period and ugh. Way too many passes. Daniel (I think) could have had that shot, and he should have just shot it, but instead, he passed back to Naslund. Gah! Anyway, they assisted on both Edler and Salo's goals.
• Ryan. Freakin'. Kesler.
  
• Nuff said.

Canucks Open Practice tomorrow!!!

1) I miss all Eastern time zone away games
2) I miss home games on Tuesdays
3) I miss the first (and sometimes second) period of home games on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays
4) ... Repeat those 3 reasons until you get to 10.

Anyway, obviously I really can't comment on any games since I was not able to watch any of them.

From what it sounds like, the Canucks are still having some troubles in defence, though they apparently tightened up against the Capitals last night.

They also seem to have problems shooting the puck. I'd say scoring, but you need to shoot to score. Anyway, so much problems on shooting that the Coach dedicated practices towards shooting and going towards the net. Again, looks like they did shoot a lot against the Caps last night.

As for news... in no particular order:

• Congratulations to Kevin Bieksa and his wifey, Katie, on the baby boy, Cole Walter Bieksa. :D Play some good hockey so we can draft you! :DDDD
• Sami Salo is back. :D Welcome back Sami!!!
• Lukas Krajicek is out. Ankle injury, apparently? I'm not exactly sure how long he is out.
  
• Markus Naslund had 1 shot on goal on the 2 games before the Capitals game last night.
• Markus Naslund had 3 shots on goal against the Capitals last night, and one assist.
• Canucks lost against the Hurricanes, 4-2?
• Canucks lost against the Red Wings, 3-2?
• Canucks win against the Capitals, 3-2
• Taylor Pyatt was a monster against the Capitals.
• When I say monster I mean he actually used his fat big body to score his 3rd and 4th of the season.
  
• I actually regret not being able to watch the game because I love watching Pyatt when he's having a good game. I actually recorded it on PVR, but I just don't have time to watch and my dad watches our tv through slingbox, so he watches what I watch, so no PVRed stuff when he's watching. Anyway, if Pyatt did play a power forward game tonight, I'm really sad I couldn't see it live. :( When he plays like that, you just wonder why he doesn't do it more often. He usually scores when he's playing "power forward hockey".
  
• On that powerplay goal by Pyatt in the 3rd period? Wicked passing courtesy of Markus Naslund, Alexander Edler and Brendan Morrison. I love seeing Nazzy passing the puck with authority.
• Speaking of which... Our powerplay rocks. Scorching, even.
• Our penalty kill sucks. I guess you can only have one or the other? The price you pay for powerplay goals, perhaps?
  
• I can't think of anything else.

I forgot to add the most important thing from tonight's game other than the win:

TAYLOR PYATT THREW A HUGE HIT ON SOMEBODY FROM DETROIT IN THE FIRST PERIOD!!!

I know, I was shocked, too. After getting over that initial shock, I proceeded to make fun of him saying, "Man, after that hit, Taylor must have gone to the bench and told the coach he needed an ice bag to ice his sore shoulder :P"

I think that's the only big hit he threw in his life in the game, but the kid has got to start somewhere. :P

Daniel Sedin hugs Lukas Krajicek after scoring a goal

The Vancouver Canucks played a good team game tonight, but the amount of penalties called in this game, not to mention the fact that we scored on none on the man advantage, is just atrocious. I was kind of happy it was McCreary (sp?) who called the game since I knew he was no Mick McGeough, but dear lord....... 17 penalties? I regretted my initial celebration. Lots of special teams action tonight on the powerplay, the penalty kill and 4-on-4.

Detroit ended up scoring the first goal, their only goal, during a 5-on-3 powerplay in the first period. Just great passing for Detroit, and Datsyuk just banged it home.

At first, things did not look well for the Canucks as they can't even get their powerplay set up, can't even get out of their own zone during the powerplay, but Bryan Smolinski responded for the Canucks just after the Detroit penalty expired, and he tied the game 1-1. Good work by Daniel Sedin on that play as he battled along the boards and Smoke fooled Hasek on a backhand wraparound.

Lukas Krajicek scored the second goal for the Canucks on another hard-working shift by the Twins. They just fought for the puck along the boards, and Henrik Sedin was able to come up with it, tried a wrap around on Hasek which left a juicy rebound to a very open Krajicek who just needed to roof the puck over a sprawling goalie. Good on Krajicek not to hastily shoot the puck.

B-mo after scoring his 2nd shorthanded goal

We also got our 5th shorthanded goal of the season as Brendan Morrison was able to take the puck away from Detroit on center ice, and he and Matt Cooke had a 2-on-1 and he buried it using his patented shoot-out shot on Hasek. Trevor Linden then sealed the game with an empty net goal in the 3rd.

Overall a good game for everyone except Markus Naslund. And I hate saying bad things about Nazzy because he's my favorite player, and I'd be unwilling to take off my blinders when it comes to him, but he really had a poor outing tonight. I don't know. I don't want to say he was poor beginning in the powerplay because our PP has been horrible recently, and not all of that can be blamed to him, but I don't know. He doesn't gain the zone with energy, both on the PP and 5-on-5.

He took us off 4-on-4 and eventually gave the Red Wings a 5-on-3 penalty, which they scored on, by "lazily" skating towards the bench. Half of it can be blamed on Matt Cooke as he should have waited for Naslund to get back, but geez Nazzy. Would it hurt you to skate a bit faster so Cooke can jump into a play as Detroit was on our side of the neutral zone? His 5-on-5 play is pretty bad as well. He turns the puck over easily, and when he does have it he can't even make some sort of play and just stays in the perimeter.

As a result, Vigneault benched him in the 2nd period as he did not give Naslund any powerplay time in our last couple powerplays. He was replaced by Taylor Pyatt on that line, and sad to say, they were able to set up and had more chances compared to when Naslund was there.

Does the Naslund-Smolinski-Bulis line even work? They've been used for more than enough games now and I don't think they have generated the desired results. To be fair to Nazzy, he has been playing well in the past few games. He has been setting up Smolinski and Bulis a lot in just the past few games, but none of them could finish. Maybe that line isn't just going to click.

I just hope Naslund bounces back and perform well in Edmonton. Being benched in the 2nd period is bad enough, so I hope this is a huge wake-up call for him and bounce back positively.

• 41 wins for Roberto Luongo this season. He didn't have to do a lot in the first 2 periods as there were enough penalties on the other end, but he came up with the big saves in the 3rd period.
• Still 0-for-9 in the powerplay. Dear God. When will it end?
  
• Sami Salo got injured in the game, but Vigneault said there's nothing to worry about as Salo might play on Monday against Edmonton. After losing Willie, I don't know what I'd do without Salo.
• They interviewed Ryan Kesler on HNIC, mostly asked about his recovery and rehab. Kesler skated in the morning practice today, but he said he'd need a couple more weeks before he can play a game. Nice to see him healing ahead of schedule as the Canucks would definitely need his grit and speed, not to mention penalty kill, in the playoffs.
• Co-wan chants were pretty loud tonight, unfortunately, he didn't get any point during the game. The Sedin-Cowan line didn't get a lot of chances this game as they did against the Blues, but I heard people still threw bra on the ice anyway?
  

Next game is against the Oilers. Please Canucks. Don't take Oilers easily like you guys always do when you're playing a team with a record much worse than yours.