The Fan In Van Podcast & Blog - Matt Lee

No, I’m not talking about Rick Rypien’s brutal hit on Mathieu Roy, I’m talking about how ugly the wins are going to be for the Vancouver Canucks in their eight matches against the Edmonton Oilers this season.

While my completely unbiased opinion tells me that Rypien’s hit was clean and a complete exaggeration on Craig MacTavish’s part, that’s not what I’m here to write about. No, I’m here to talk about how badly the Sedin twins are going to destroy the Edmonton defense this coming season.

I said it right when the Oilers decided to let Jason Smith go and take in Sheldon Souray. By trading their captain and best shutdown defenceman to the Philadelphia Flyers, Edmonton’s goals against total will skyrocket this season, and in doing so this will be very beneficial to players like the Sedin twins who can cycle the puck and see each other from the back of their heads. Don’t get me wrong; Souray and Pitkanen will provide some much needed firepower to an Oilers PP which ailed throughout last season, but let’s face facts: Souray and Pitkanen will not play defence.

Don’t believe me? Let me demonstrate how poor Souray is at playing defence. Aside from Souray finishing -11 and -28 in his last two seasons, let’s look back specifically at when he and his former club the Montreal Canadiens squared off against the Canucks on January 16th. Most of you will remember this as the game where Luongo came back from his throat injury the practice before and earned a shutout, but on this night, Sheldon Souray was getting burned by the likes of Josh Green and Ryan Kesler as they earned their second and sixth goals of the season. Souray ended up finishing -2 on the night.

I love Joni Pitkanen as a player. I think he’s a budding young powerplay quarterback who reminds me of a younger Sami Salo. But, and perhaps the fact that the Flyers tanked so poorly last year is the reason, when you go from +22 in 2006 to -25 in 2007, it shows me that when your back is against the wall on that blueline, you can’t cut it as a shutdown defenceman. Pitkanen will have to get used to the fact that the West is a much bigger monster than those in the East take for granted, and I think he’s going to learn this the hard way.

Skip forward to tonight’s exhibition game featuring the two teams. Daniel and Henrik Sedin combine to score one goal and four assists while demonstrating some chemistry with both Ryan Shannon and Mason Raymond. In the process, I’m watching Edmonton blueliners like Dick Tarnstrom and Denis Grebeshkov get burned left, right and centre on that blueline. The Sedins looked unstoppable, and I know it’s still just pre-season, but this looked as real as its going to get. The Sedins were seemingly toying with the Oilers D and it showed.

If Edmonton has any hope of making the playoffs, they’re going to need to find a way to solve the Sedins in their eight games they play them this season. And for that matter, the rest of the Northwest Division.

So the NHL came crashing down on Steve Downie this morning, giving the physical winger a 20-game suspension for his hit on Dean McAmmond in exhibition action. The suspension is the fifth-longest in NHL history.

Alright, so I’m going to make this perfectly clear: In no way do I condone what Steve Downie did. Simply put, there is no place in the great game of hockey for a hit like that. It was pretty evident that Downie left his feet and threw his whole body at McAmmond. McAmmond only saw Downie coming at him at the last second and had no chance of avoiding the hit and Downie pretty much blindsided the veteran winger.  For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HerZdQmigLs

But in all fairness to the junior prospect who represented Canada at the World Juniors only two years ago, it’s clear of a few things:

• The hit was not pre-meditated; in other words, Downie didn’t seek out McAmmond to injure him
• Downie was having a satisfactory camp with the Flyers and, like Nathan McIver on the Canucks, for example, wanted to make an impact (no pun intended). It just so happened that this hit got ugly and he took it out of hand.
• This hit was publicized all over Canada. It reminds me starkly of the Bertuzzi/Moore incident and all the attention it got nationwide. When the NHL sat back to evaluate the aftermath and the negative media criticism of the hit (they waited 8 days for a decision), it leads me to believe they were more pressured to really come down hard on Downie.
• Unfortunately for Downie, this hit came at a time where everyone is really trying to crack down on head shots and concussions. A sports doctor (forget where and who)  recently concluded that 50-60% of NHL players have concussion-like symptoms.
• The severity of the hit led to a huge brawl on the ice (Again, much like the Bertuzzi/Moore incident). Even guys like Chris Neil of the Senators gave a Brad May-like ‘bounty’ on Downie’s head for the next time the Sens play the Flyers. There’s a huge precedent here in the case of Downie.

In all honesty, do I believe Downie deserved the 20-game suspension? No. I mean, put Downie’s name up there with everyone else who’s in the ballpark of 20-game suspensions. Marty McSorely, Chris Simon, the aforementioned Bertuzzi … the first two were some pretty brutal stick work on their part, and Bertuzzi… well, you know. Downie’s hit was pretty ugly, but I really don’t think it deserved 20 games. 10-15 maybe, but because of the factors noted above, the NHL had to come down hard on the kid to set an example of the rest of the NHLers who may do this again another time.

It seemed pretty apparent to me that the NHL was victimized by all the sports media in Canada who called it one of the ugliest things they seen in hockey. A complete exaggeration of the event and the aftermath which followed (McAmmond Press Conference, Downie’s apology) played factors in the suspension length. Did Downie deserve the 20? Nope. But was Colin Campbell justified in giving him the 20? Oh hell yeah. These delicate situations are difficult to deal with from both sides of the spectrum, but before the rest of you jump on Downie and say that the suspension wasn’t nearly long enough, just remember that in the end, it ultimately was bad timing for Downie.

ESPN: If the NHL decides to go with bigger nets, one of its top goaltenders said Tuesday he won’t be playing in the league anymore.

In a conference call Tuesday, Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo said he would retire if the league used bigger nets.

“If that day comes, I don’t think you guys will be seeing me in the NHL,” Luongo said.

Luongo said he would retire, even if the league made the nets bigger by just a few inches.

“I have no intentions of playing with bigger nets,” Luongo said.

Although the notion of fundamentally changing the game by enlarging the current nets is opposed by many general managers, in the face of declining scoring, it has become a hot topic in the NHL. Now that your heart has recovered from the mild heart attack you internally sustained, let’s stop and think about this. Perhaps Roberto Luongo’s threat is an empty-handed one; Bryan McCabe said he would never play in a salary-capped era and Jeremy Roenick said the NHLPA would never concede to Gary Bettman and his owners. This may be a knee-jerk reaction on Luongo’s part so don’t feel you need to drown yourself in the Vancouver Aquarium.

That being said, the NHL simply cannot allow itself to go to bigger nets. The NHL has already broken traditions by making wholesale jersey changes, throwing dots on the ice and including a shootout. If the NHL decides to go to bigger nets it would be breaking a tradition which has been in this league for several decades. We just can’t allow that gaping 6 x 4 get any bigger, plain and simple.

But don’t get me wrong, I admire the NHL’s willingness to try and create more offence to market to the American audiences, but there has to be some form of boundary here. Bigger nets just would create too much animosity amongst players and fans alike. The last thing this league needs right now is another controversial decision.