Hockey Is BACK!!
It felt like a long summer but in reality it was a short summer. Four months ago our Vancouver Canucks fell to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Final of Game 7. Canucks came back this year in better fitness condition than any other year with only one thing in mind. REDEMPTION and are focused again on our holy grail, THE STANLEY CUP!! This year its do or die.
The team for the most part came back in tact with only a couple major guys on the injury reserve. Ryan Kesler is expected to come back sometime in November now that he's been cleared for contact after undergoing hip surgery in the summer and Mason Raymond will be out indefinatley with a broken back that occured on a play in Game 6. Of course, because Erhoff left to play for the Buffalo Sabres, Raffi Torres is with the Phoenix Coyotes and Tanner Glass chose to play for Winnipeg this year, there were some spots for new guys this year. With the addition of Marco Sturm, Aaron Volpatti, Dale Weise and with Cody Hodgson filling in for Kesler on the 2nd line, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The first test was tonight! It was a magical night as our Vancouver Canucks took to the ice and the President's Trophy, Western Conference trophy and all the individual trophies were showcased in front of an almost sell-out crowd. Also the "Heart of a Canuck" campaign kicked off and many heros who emerged after the riots broke out after Game 7 were honored. This included first responders like Police, Fire and individuals who tried to defend our city that night as well as the people who initiated the Clean-up efforts the day after.
The game itself started out kinda rocky for our Canucks as the Penguins had control of most of the first period. Canucks ran into penalty trouble as Kevin Bieksa headed to the box for Matt Cooke's first power play goal. Can't really blame Bieksa as it was a good play and a bad call by the ref. The second goal of the night also came from Cooke shorthanded from between Bieksa's legs and beat Luongo on the glove side. Lu's weakest side. As the game progressed you could see our team started to come on with some great chances and were gelling alot more. The final score of this game is not indicitive of how well this team played. Canucks should have been up at least 6-3 by the end of regular time. However, that's not how it went. The Sedin twins, Alex Burrows, Bieksa, Lapierre and others all had great chances to put this game away in the third period but were not able to. Unfortunatley, after one overtime period it was a 3-3 stalemate and so a shootout took place to decide the ending of this game. Lu himself would have told you that he hates shootouts the most as its his weakest part of his game. I wasn't expecting a big win here but I was hoping and praying that maybe it would happen. It was not meant to be tonight. Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin made sure of it.
Overall, our boys played a great game tonight showing their fans that even with only playing together for 2 pre-season games, they can still be a threat and I'm sure that given more time to play together, they will be a formidable team...and don't forget that our spark plug and most aggressive player will return to play in November. I really missed 'Kes' tonight though.
I'm excited...HOCKEY"S BACK!!! GO Canucks Go!!!
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