Last night’s game between the Devils and the Canucks was just that – a regular season NHL game.  It wasn’t a “showdown” between Roberto Luongo and Martin Brodeur to see who should be the starting goaltender for Canada in the Olympics.  It was an opportunity to see two of the best goalies in the game facing off against each other.  Nothing more.  Nothing less. 

Hell, the way the game started, you’d think that Brodeur not only wouldn’t get the starting job, but would be dropped from the roster completely.  But then you’d think the same thing about Luongo if  you watched the last five minutes of the first period, too.  But that’s not the way that Steve Yzerman or Hockey Canada work.  And that’s not the way people should be thinking about it, anyway. 

Alex Burrows has settled in quite well with the Sedins again, picking up his 7th goal of the year.  The Sedins had four points between them on those first three goals, and it was sure great to see Sami Salo rip one in from the point.   Without a doubt, the Canucks outplayed the Devils for almost the entire first period, just having those lapses at the end to make the game appear a little closer than it actually was.

It was fundamentally sound, if not the most exciting thing to watch, save for the final outcome.  There were no obviously glaring errors that showed up.  Definitely a good thing.

One thing that kind of struck me was how empty the Prudential Center seemed to be.  I saw a whole lot of empty seats for a game against a decent team that doesn’t turn up too often in Jersey.  I mean, it’s not like it was St. Louis in town.  I checked the box score on NHL.com, and I wasn’t imagining it: 13,586 in attendance.   This for a team that’s 8 games above .500 and 3 points out of first in their division?  Or maybe New Jersey’s always like this?  I don’t know.

I think tonight’s PPV game against the Flyers will have a little more emotion in it.  Roberto Luongo will probably be starting tonight and then Andrew Raycroft will most likely be getting the start against Carolina on Saturday morning.  10:30am?  Jeez, it only used to be Sunday games in Boston that started at weird times.

So let me get this straight.  Willie Mitchell throws a perfectly legal hit on Johnathan Toews, and gets a penalty for it.  The Canucks have a 2 on 0 breakaway blown dead because Dustin Byfuglien jumps Mitchell.  Beautiful.

Apparently goaltenders don’t need to stop breakaways anymore.  Someone just needs to jump someone behind the play, and things get blown dead.  No more breakaway.

This whole thing lately about a fight breaking out over a clean but hard hit is just pissing me off. It’s a physical game, for God’s sake.  People get hurt.  Just because someone gets hurt from a hit DOESN’T mean it was a dirty hit.

Did the Pens get jumped when Roberto Luongo got hurt last year?  Was there a fight after Daniel Sedin or Sami Salo got hurt earlier this year?  (Okay, bad example on Salo).

Regardless, the Canucks played as close to a complete game as they have in awhile, coming back to beat the Blackhawks for their first road win of the year.  Killing off 5 on 3’s, Michael Grabner getting his first NHL goal, and Mikael Samuelsson chipping in the game winner.

Alain Vigneault has been a little too light on the Canucks (at least in the media) by saying that the Canucks have been out-chancing their opponents two or three to one lately.  Uh, coach?  How many points do you get for outshooting the other team 40 – 20 if you lose 3-1?  That’s right.  NONE.  You need to get chances, but if you don’t finish more of them, you might as well have not had them.

Hopefully the trend continues tonight with a Leafs team that’s had a week off, but is still looking for its first win.  Best thing that they could do?  Jump out to a quick two goal lead to take the pressure off, and then keep driving.  Hell, run up the score.

Because, of course, there’s nothing better than beating the Leafs on national TV.  Until the playoffs start, of course.  Not that the Leafs will be playing in the post season anyway.

That certainly wasn’t one of the Canucks’ best efforts.  They played like they had back in January – a team that just gave up on themselves and wouldn’t have won the game if they’d been playing a Junior ‘B’ team. 

Which isn’t to say that they didn’t do some things right.  They definitely did, jumping out to a 2-0 lead, before allowing the Blackhawks to completely dominate the rest of the game, and even the series at a game apiece.  Now the Hawks have the split they want before heading back to the United Center and a crowd that used to be absolutely terrifying to play in front of, at least when they played at the Chicago Stadium.  We’ll have to see about that.

It looks as if Sami Salo might be lost to the Canucks again, as he appeared to injure himself scoring his goal, and didn’t play the balance of the game.  Is the guy made of onionskin paper or something?   This might be Ossi Vannanen’s chance to make an appearance in this series.  No disrespect to Ossi, but the Canucks would be a better team with Sami on the blue line.

It wasn’t Roberto Luongo’s best effort, but it wouldn’t be fair to dump this whole loss on him.  The Canucks stood around and watched the Hawks walk around them, and the final result was predictable.  The Canucks got away from what made them successful in the St. Louis series – they stopped hitting everything that moved.  Sure, not all series’ are the same, but come on – hit something.

If it’s true that Dustin Byfuglien just likes to cause mayhem but rarely wants to fight, maybe Rick Rypien should knock him on his ass three or four times with some good hard open ice hits, and maybe that’ll keep the guy in line for the balance of the series.

Next up is the 5pm start on Tuesday.  Should be interesting to see how the Canucks respond to last night’s loss.  What they really need to do is silence the crowd in Chicago and just get the win.  That’ll guarantee them at least the split, and if they manage to win both games, they can come back here and close out the series on Saturday night.

Scary way to win a playoff game, eh?  The Canucks didn’t start out flat, but they sure almost finished that way, handing the game back to the Blackhawks in the third period.  Thankfully they were able to capitalize on Brian Campbell’s mistake late in the third, and convert a four on one breakout into a Sami Salo goal, and a 1-0 lead in the series.

I don’t think that anyone was under the impression that these were going to be one-goal games, and in that way, they didn’t disappoint.  But it would have been wrong to think that the Canucks were going to have as easy a time in the second round as they appeared to against St. Louis.

But a 3-0 lead thanks to goals from Pavol Demitra, Henrik Sedin, and Ryan Kesler did a lot to keep people believing about what this team could accomplish this year.  If they sweep the home series, it’d be hard not to think that the Hawks would consider themselves up against the ropes a little.  Sure they could come back from a pair down, but that would mean having to win at least one game back here in Vancouver, and that might be a tall order right now.

Did the 9-day layoff contribute to what happened in the third period?  Who knows.  But it doesn’t really matter now, anyways.  The Canucks found a way to work around the situation, and still come out with the win in a game that sure looked like it was headed to overtime.  And that’s a crapshoot that it would be best to avoid if at all possible.

Game 2 on Saturday night will hopefully be just as entertaining as the first one, but even if it’s not, the end result is the most important thing anyway.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an ugly win, so long as it’s a win.

It had all the potential to go horribly wrong.  The Canucks were playing at home after an eastern road swing.  Roberto Luongo injured himself on said road trip and no one knows how long he’s going to be out.  They were playing the Detroit Red Wings.  They gave up the first goal, and trailed late in the game.  Like I said – it could all go very, very wrong.

But not this time.  With Curtis Sanford making his third appearance in as many games, the Canucks rallied twice to beat the Wings in overtime again, with Sami Salo burying the puck behind Chris Osgood in an extra frame that the Canucks totally dominated.  The fact that they were on the powerplay helped as well.

Watching this game, I was amazed to learn that the Canucks had been substantially outshot in the game, because that’s not how it looked.  When the Canucks play the wings, it’s always a wide open, free-wheeling game, with no trapping in site.  It makes the game much more enjoyable to watch.  Kind of like a game against the Flames.

So Cory Schneider has been called up from the Moose to backup Sanford as long as Luongo is going to be out, and you have to think that he’s going to have to get some ice time eventually.  Maybe not against the Flames this Thursday, but he’ll get at least one start before he goes back to Manitoba.  Based on the way he’s been playing down there, they’d have to be nuts to not give him at least one shot.

The one thing that I hope the Canucks learn from last night’s game is that they can run with any team in the league – even the elite ones – if they just stay out of the penalty box.  Last time they played the Wings they took a lot of penalties, and it cost them.  This time?  Only three powerplays for Detroit, and the Canucks came out on top.

They also didn’t roll over and die when Detroit took the lead late in the game.  Just a minute and ten seconds later, Daniel Sedin scored his 400th point on a deflection that was an absolute thing of beauty.  That is *exactly* how a deflection should go in.

Next up is the Flames on Thursday, and the Canucks will be looking to increase their lead in the Northwest, as the Wild are failing to pick up any ground on them.

Okay, it’s not quite as bad as last year, but the Canucks are suffering a little in the injury department again, with Demitra and Salo both out (yeah, I know, big surprise, but still…) and now word that Rick Rypien is out indefinitely after being diagnosed with a “sports hernia”.

And there’s been no shortage of coverage of the injury scene, with Alanah, Mike, Sean, and various MSM sites covering the details, but if they start suffering any more damage, things are going to turn out like last year, with the Canucks losing 265 games to injury last year, according to James Mirtle.

But as bad as we thought we had it, the Islanders lost over *400* games to injury last year, so…

Admittedly though, Salo, Demitra and Rypien all have the reputation of being a little fragile, so the fact that they’re out isn’t a major shock, but could a longer training camp have prevented maybe one or two of these injuries?  I mean, a weekend in Whistler, and you break camp?  I know that the CBA limits how much ice time the vetrans are allowed to practice, but come on – two days?  I think it’s amazing that they haven’t suffered more injuries than they already have.

Anyway, the rant is over.  Time to get ready for the Bruins tonight – a team I’ve always enjoyed watching them play, even though the wins haven’t always been there.  I’m going to call 5 -3 for the Canucks.

Yeah, I know, I haven’t posted anything in way too long.  But to be honest, the Canucks haven’t given me anything positive to write about, either.  Hopefully the win over the Avalanche the other night will turn out to be a turning point, because they sure played better than they have in the last few games.

It seems that what carried them for a lot of the second half of last season, the defense, is self-destructing, not entirely through any fault of their own.  Serious injuries to both Kevin Bieksa and Sami Salo are leaving the corps rather depleted at the moment, and those who remain are going to have to pick things up in ways that they couldn’t have imagined a month ago.

At least these injuries didn’t happen in February – there’s still enough time left to recover, and get things going in the right direction.

I’ll be back more regularly, too.  Win or lose, I’m in this thing for the long haul.

According to Canucks.com, it looks like Sami Salo will play either tonight against the Wings, or Friday against the Capitals. Hopefully this will be the shot that the defensive corps needs after falling way off from where they were for the second half of last season.

Taylor Pyatt is going to play after getting clipped by Mason Raymond’s stick the other night, although Kevin Bieksa flew home to be with his wife, who’s giving birth to their first baby. Congratulations.

A number of people said that maybe the Canucks just needed to get away from GM Place for a bit and pick up some wins on the road. I was among those people. But so far they’re 1-1 with two games left that aren’t going to be simple wins. It’s time for them to start focusing on what they’re capable of doing, and if they play with the same work ethic they employed last year, they’ll be OK. I guess we’ll see tonight.

J.J. at the Canucks Hockey Blog has his thoughts on tonight’s game as well.

The Canucks reported today that Alex Edler has been sent down to the Manitoba Moose.  He hadn’t played in the two regular season games after seeing action in five preseason games, scoring two goals, an assist, and picking up 6 penalty minutes.

This leaves the Canucks with just six defencemen in town with Sami Salo still at least a week away while recovering from a broken finger.