I don’t normally rip the Canucks on this blog, mainly because it breaks from the format, but after another year of the Vancouver sporting press filling 95% of their column inches with NHL minutiae at the expense of every other sport around, and with the team having self-destructed in the most lazy and heartless of ways down the stretch, I figure the situation finally warrants a rant. And there’s a (tenuous) C’s connection, so here it is:

I could punch Markus Naslund in the face.

Please don’t misunderstand me - I’m not saying "I’m so angry" I could punch Markus Naslund in the face, I just honestly think I could get away with it.

To be sure, I’m not a big guy, so I don’t think he’d go down, even if I was wearing some great big Ike Turner rings and taking a running start. But I also don’t think he’d do anything about it.

He’d take a shot to the nose, blink a few times, take a step backward, and say "Uh, I’m not entirely sure that was called for…" Then I’d punch him again, and he’d say "Look, I understand where you’re coming from, but…" and I’d punch him again and he’d just stop talking and start looking around for a teammate to fight me.

But he WOULDN’T hit back.

Now, Jarkko Ruutu was a guy you’d never punch in the face, because he’d probably slash you across the wrists for doing so. Heck, Jarkko Ruutu was the kind of guy that, if you went out drinking with him and had a few too many, you’d wake up the next morning in a bathtub full of ice with only one kidney.

Hitting Ed Jovanovski would be like hitting a side of beef - there’s just no cartilage left to hurt. Your punch would sponge to a stop as he drove your nose bone into your brain. Even Dan ‘Invisible Glove’ Cloutier would turn around at a meer sideways glance and drive the back of your head through a window. Those were guys who, as untalented as they could be, at least never let you walk over them. They might get killed on penalties or do something stupid to lose in the final seconds, but you had to get past them physically to make it matter.

But Markus Naslund? Him you can punch. And anyone else in the Vancouver Canucks team outside of Willie Mitchell and Kevin Bieksa - hit them at will in the full knowledge that they’ll NEVER fight back. They just can’t do it. No heart. No pride. No junk. No lie.

That was the gist of what C’s media honcho, Rob Fai, was saying last week on TEAM1040’s The Rookie (nice job, Rob, by the way). The way he put it, and he put it well, these Canucks just don’t have anyone who can stomp you, especially when Bieksa is injured, so you can pretty much have your way with them. And while no radio guy who ever wants to be let back into a locker room will say a team doesn’t care about winning and is just collecting a paycheck - results be damned - he didn’t stop far short of that.

Okay, he did, but he came closer to it than any other talking head in the Vancouver Sporting Press this NHL season.

Not that the press hasn’t been on the ‘Canucks are pussies’ bandwagon in the days since, but they all, to a man, waited until the season was over and the GM likely fired before saying so. Nobody wanted to upset the team, and nobody wants to upset the "Canucks can do no wrong" crowd of homers while there’s a mathematical chance they can make the playoffs. But the cold hard fact of the matter is (and has been for most of the season), these Vancouver Canucks just didn’t give a damn - starting with the guy wearing the ‘C’ on his chest - and nobody called them on it until it didn’t matter.

That’s weak. It’s Canucks weak. Speak your minds, Pratt, Taylor and Ball, speak loudly and if need be, rudely. And do it when it matters - not after the fact. 

You know, if someone reads this blog post to Markus Naslund, I have a
feeling his response would be, "Well, the guys obviously tried hard…
did their best… we’re disappointed but, we’ll try again tomorrow and…
hope for a better result… the fans deserve it…" You know how I know he’d
say that? Because he’s said it, word for word, during EVERY INTERVIEW HE’S EVER DONE.

You know what else is weak? A coach who won’t throw a player or two under a bus when it’s called for. I heard Alain Vigneault, again on TEAM1040, with a week left in the season, explaining away a 4-2 from-behind loss as being the result of "a few pucks that didn’t bounce our way…"

Are you freaking kidding me? You can blame a few dancing pucks for a 1-0 loss. You can blame them for a 2-1 loss, or an overtime loss, but when you’re leading 2-0 and you give up FOUR GOALS STRAIGHT when you’re on the cusp of the playoffs - it’s not the pucks that are the problem anymore, it’s the players. It’s the line. It’s the system. It’s the organization.

I, like most people in Vancouver, give a rats behind about the Canucks only if I can see that they’ll leave blood on the ice in a bid to get the win. If they lose, so be it - just as long as they left entrails to be cleaned up after the fact. If they get pounded - so be it, as long as the other guys felt it too and will go to sleep sore.

But to pee away a season in which they were so damn close to the playoffs, just because they were tired and had a few injuries… to go down so meekly, so weakly, and so completely, seemingly because they just didn’t care enough to bother showing up for the big game… well, it kinda reminds me of the playoff run of the 2004 Vancouver Canadians.

And that’s not a compliment. 

If the Canucks bosses really want to reinvent their team, start with this guy as the captain.