August 25, 2010
So Long, Barge Pole Willie (Reprise)

Back on April 16, we offered up our opinion that Willie Mitchell had played his last game in a Canuck uniform.  Today, it was confirmed as Willie accepted a 2 year deal at $3.5 million per from the Los Angeles Kings.

Make no mistake (despite what you might have heard) Mitchell’s fate in Vancouver was sealed long ago.  Long before he got hurt.  As a pending free agent, Willie was looking at a significant raise before the dirty hit from Evgeni Malkin.  Had the Canucks wanted him as part of their future, they could have locked him up before last season started.  They chose not to.  And why not, Willie and his big stick were reasonably effective, but essentially one dimensional and past prime. 

As much as his injury hurt the Canucks’ fortunes this past season, it opened the possibility that they might be able to resign him as damaged goods with a further hometown discount.  But his surprisingly quick summer recovery changed all that.

Credit goes to Willie and his agent for their dog and pony show that convinced a number of quality teams that he’s ready to play.  So long for now, Willie.  We’ll be seeing plenty of you this season.

10:09pm
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Filed under: willie mitchell vancouver canucks 
May 21, 2010
Mike Gillis - Master of the Spin

Fortunately, we only caught the tail end of an interview with Mike Gillis this morning on the Team 1040.  Gillis was lamenting the “catastrophic” injuries to his team this year by referencing some bizarre stat, something like “salary cap dollars tied up in players on injured reserve”.  Wow.  Now that would mean something if Hank Sedin had spent the year on the DL.  But when Pavol Demitra misses most of the season, that’s a blessing, not a curse.  The fact it’s a lot of salary tied up speaks to the idiocy of the signing and not some grand misfortune.  Same goes for Kevin Bieksa, who is the highest paid defensemen despite being at best their 5th best defender when everyone is healthy.  The only other significant injury was to Willie Mitchell, who the Canucks seemingly had no interest in re-signing.  Gillis, you might make us dizzy, but we’ve still got our eye on the ball…

2:55pm
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Filed under: mike gillis pavol demitra henrik sedin kevin bieksa willie mitchell 
May 17, 2010
Should He Stay or Should He Go?

The Canucks have a number of pending free agents; 5 of the restricted variety and 5 that are unrestricted.  We expect that most, if not all, of the restricted guys will be back (even everyone’s favourite party boy, SOB).  As for the unrestricted guys, who knows?  With that our next poll question (anyone that picks Pavol Demitra is banned):

9:09pm
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Filed under: canucks kyle wellwood pavol demitra willie mitchell andrew raycroft ryan johnson 
May 14, 2010
Mitchell, Our Martyr

A huge thumbs up to Willie Mitchell for calling out Colin Campbell, the league’s lord of supposed discipline.  Barge Pole Willie’s season (and possibly career) were ended by a dirty hit from a dirty player (although an elite one, too) at the tail end of a mean-nothing regular season rout by the Canucks.  Because Mitchell had the balls (but not the brains) to quickly get himself off the mat and because the NHL is reluctant to hand out big suspensions to star players, there was shamefully no response from the league.  A league that looks more and more bush with every breath they take.

Here’s a guy that’s given his all to his team and his community and he might be done and the league, as is often the case, idly stands by condoning reckless behaviour.  Something has got to give and one day it will and Gary Bettman’s beloved US TV ratings will bottom out one more time.

8:25am
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Filed under: willie mitchell colin campbell evgeni malkin gary bettman 
May 13, 2010
All of the Above

So says “Jan Bulis”.  And can you blame him?  Certainly not.  But a poll with 100% of the respondents picking the same thing wouldn’t be too much fun. 

Thanks for all your responses.  Yesterday set a new high water mark for hits and visits at our blog proving once again that in Canuckistan we are seemingly happiest when wallowing in our own misery.

In the coming days and weeks we will investigate each of our “goats” in more detail.  The fact that there are so many proves how badly this team came off the rails.

You will notice that we didn’t include in our list of goats the much talked about banged up defense.  Frankly, if we hear another person rail on about that, we’re going to go Gino Odjick on them.  Four years ago with Roberto Luongo at the peak of his powers, we fizzled out again in the second round because of an incredibly lame pop gun offense.  The restless natives yearned for the days of the West Coast Express.  This year we had the highest scoring team in the conference and a gold medal winning goalie and all the focus is on the defense.  But here’s the deal.  In the salary cap era, you cannot have it all.  Unless by some miracle you get all-star performances from a couple of rookies or a cheap goalie gets hot for 8 weeks in May and June.  That’s it.  As it was, the Canucks were able to ice 5 of their top 6 defensemen.  Missing Willie Mitchell sucked, but he’s just one guy.  And a one dimensional guy at that.  So much so that the Canucks had no interest in him for next year.  He looked like a pylon last year against the Hawks - would this year have been any different?  The defending champion Penguins made it to the Finals two years in a row with a below average defense and would have again this year had they not run into the aforementioned cheap goalie in the run of the decade.

Make no mistake, we are absolutely irate about the early exit, but we’d prefer what we saw this year as opposed to the rope-a-dope team of ‘06-07.

10:59am
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Filed under: canucks willie mitchell roberto luongo gino odjick