Despite the support of dog nation, the Canucks beat themselves last night with a less than stellar effort in the biggest game of the year. Sure by halfway through the 3rd period, they were rolling … a bit … Burrows (the Uni-brower), sniper of 2 goals this year (and half a dozen disallowed markers) jammed one home to give us life – enough where we knew one of the lads would come through in Overtime like so many times before in this the “season of one goal games,” right? Someone *will* score.
We all made our picks but no one chose what happened – shoot, the shooter was heading to the bench unaware he’d scored. Luongo knows what happened, he won’t forget for quite some time.
So now is the time we seek positives to take away – i spieled on this for much time last night in my post-Neidermeyer haze – but the “isn’t it super how we did better than expected” feeling is settling in my belly like a Denny’s hangover breakfast – a bit queasy now but should absorb the poison … eventually.
Yes records were set (Lou, Hank), pleasant surprises (Beeker and the Brabarian) and old friends stepped up for another kick at the trophy (TL), to balance out a few under-whelming performers (Chounaird, Santala) to go along with the roller coaster years of Wooly Bullis and Taylor MySpace … And sure the future looks bright – maybe the most depth in a couple of decades (mmmbop Hansen & Elder Edler, where did these guys come from?). But right now, it feels like waiting in the rain for a bus which never came.
I will do a wrap up soon with some of the State of the Franchise recordings to make a ‘montage’ of where we came from this year and talk about who might be gone next year with 11 free agents of one kind or another.
Just like Rocky went to Siberia to train in order to toughen himself up, a gut check might be the call for the Canucks to prepare for a serious run next year. Seriously, a ‘serious’ run, not an ‘underdog’ run or a ‘big surprise’ run but instead a serious run by a team which expects and in fact *demands* to be there, playing in the biggest games, ready with the puck on the stick, ready to pull the tirgger, ready to bring the thrills of June hockey to us – the bealugered fans.
We’re ready and we’ve been ready, already.
