Critically Canuck

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Like all members of Canuck Nation, we here at Critically Canuck have suffered a long time. We will not die happily unless the Stanley Cup makes its way to Stanley Park. Here you'll get the straight goods on our heroes. With both feet on the bandwagon, we will, however, pull no punches. As long time season ticket holders, that's our prerogative. Expect analytical insight with a strong sense of history. We'll ask the tough questions. And answer them. Enjoy. Ask me anything Submit

June 17, 2010

So You Think You’re Tough - Round Two, Match Three

Today’s competition features two legendary defensemen, both big fan favourites…

Harold Snepsts - Here at CC, we have a serious case of man crush love for “Harooooooold”. And not because of his dashing good looks. Snepsts was a war horse defensemen, punishing hitter and a feared fighter. Forget about the giveaway to Mike Bossy in OT of game 1 of the ‘82 final, we’re talking about physical toughness here and he was as tough as they came. There’s no shortage of vintage Snepsts clips, but we like this one, which is from late in his career (while playing for the Wings) taking on the supposed tough guy, Wendel Clark (in his presumed prime). Even an old Harold can open a can of whup ass on the hated Leaf. Harold, in the most lopsided round 1 match-up, made Tim Hunter, remarkably, just a little uglier.

Ed Jovanovski - “Special Ed” was almost the complete package with great speed, good puck skills, an often fiery disposition and quick heavy hands when it came to scrapping. “Jovo Cop” used his fleet feet to become a feared open ice hitter. Always a great teammate, he was eager to take one for the team. Here he is making quick work of Adam Deadmarsh, handing the poor guy the first of many concussions. Eddie proved his popularity around here defeating the legendarily dirty Dave “Tiger” Williams in the last round.

View and vote here:

Today’s Honourable Mention:

Barry Wilkins - Who the heck is this guy? Better known as the guy that scored the Canucks first NHL goal, Wilkins was a hard rock defenseman “back in the day”. This hard nosed defender was the Nucks’ most consistent d-man in their early years, providing crucial toughness to an expansion team that certainly needed it.

Tomorrow, we will bring you the final Round Two pairing.

8:54am
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(Notes: 2)

June 14, 2010

So You Think You’re Tough - Round One CLOSED

Okay, we’ve milked this for long enough - we’re on to round two. Thanks for your participation. A quick recap of round one:

Trevor Linden defeated Rick Rypien in a mismatch. Clearly, the voters are putting more emphasis on a balanced definition of toughness as opposed to pure pugilism. We applaud your discriminating taste.
Stan Smyl took out the much larger Jack McIlhargey in a fairly lopsided pairing. After this battle, we envision Jack Mac wearing that neck brace he fashioned on one of the late 70’s hockey cards of our youth.
Harold Snepsts destroyed Tim Hunter in our most lopsided match. And no, we were not stuffing the ballot box in favour of our hero Harold. Really, an ex-Flame had no business being in this contest in the first place.
Mattias Ohlund narrowly edged out Cam Neely. This will have some eyes rolling but Mattias presumably gets credibility for his long career here. In fact, we will go as far to say that if Ohlund were not Swedish, he’d have been a bigger fan favourite here and just might have wound up with his number hanging from the rafters. Flame away.
Ron “Chief” Delorme took out “The Strangler”, Garth Butcher, in a close match (did we say how much we loved the old school nicknames?). We suspect ”Chief” (now the Canucks’ Chief Amateur Scout) won’t get much further. Especially, if we get too much further in our draft analysis before his next match.
Gino Odjick barely eclipsed the original “Captain Canuck”, Orland Kurtenbach, in another close one. We’re sure this will leave some of the 70’s natives (we mean you, kenikoop) more than a little restless. If anything, this proves that pure pugilism can win out, particularly against a faceless victim (sorry Kurt, but you’re too old for our sketchy memories).
Ed “Jovo Cop” Jovanovski dispensed with Dave “Tiger” Williams proving that you don’t need brain to overcome brawn. Perhaps just more brawn. Or less criminal convictions.
Curt Fraser in the tightest match-up brought down Donald Brashear. We’re surprised by this outcome, not because Fraser wasn’t fantastically tough, but because his prime was quite sometime ago and Brash was the heavyweight champ for so many years.

We’ll start with round 2 tomorrow. Enjoy.

June 5, 2010

So You Think You’re Tough - Round One, Match Seven

We’re down to releasing the names of our final 4 contestants. We know the suspense is killing you.

Tiger Williams- Tiger is a legendary hockey personality. And as far as this market goes, perhaps THE legendary hockey personality. Likely the greatest agitator of his generation, he once led the league in PIM AND scored 35 goals; this with a skating style that made it appear he was running on his blades. Not a true heavyweight, he would go with anyone and had the hard head and technique to survive fight after fight. He loses points in our books though for his cowardly off ice attack against an opposing player in an old-timers’ league. Surprisingly, we couldn’t find many Canuck era Tiger clips (save the stick riding celebrations), but here’s one with Tiger making short work of a young Chicago tough guy (Jerome Dupont), who was 4 inches taller.

Today’s Honourable Mention:

Dan Cloutier- Say what you will about his mental toughness, “Clouts” was well respected by his teammates. In his career, he wound up with 147 PIM (for contrast, Roberto Luongo has 30 PIM and has played more games). Many of these minutes were fighting majors for taking on the other team’s goalie. This little clip from his early days with the Rangers is really something, pounding Tommy Salo into submission and then taunting their entire bench.