TSN: Vancouver Canucks winger Taylor Pyatt scored a pair of third period goals to give Team Blue a 4-3 win at the annual intrasquad game in Victoria, B.C., but the game proved costly as Roberto Luongo, Sami Salo, and Trevor Linden all left with injuries.
Pyatt’s late outburst was overshadowed by a Brad Isbister one-timer late in the first period that caught Luongo up high. He lay face down on the ice for more than a minute before being escorted to the dressing room.
Luongo did not return to the ice but head coach Alain Vigneault wasn’t concerned.
‘’Lui has been in this condition before,'’ Vigneault said. ‘’We’ve seen it before in the past, it’s just part of the game. He’ll be fine in the morning.'’
May I remind all Canucks fans that this is the same Roberto Luongo that took a Daniel Sedin wrist shot in the throat last January and ended up spending the night in a Montreal hospital on an IV before going on to win versus the Canadiens and, even more extraordinary, earn a shutout.
Canuck fans are up in arms and wanting to crucify Brad Isbister for his slap shot, but in all fairness to the Isbisterian One, can you blame him? This is a guy trying to earn a spot on the Canuck roster and a guy who has played for four NHL teams in five years and made trips to the minors several times in that span. What is he supposed to do, kick the puck towards Luey and pray that it goes in? Give the guy a break. No one was calling for Danger Sedin’s head when he took the shot on Luongo in January. Give me a break.
I realize that the chances of a puck hitting a goaltender’s throat/collar bone area are remote, but this has now happened two in a span of nine months. And for the Canucks to allow Luongo to get by without wearing a guard on his mask frightens me a little. I’m aware Luongo hates playing with it, but the reality is the netminder is a $7M investment and the startling reality is that this team will go only as far as Luongo can go. The all-time great goaltenders in the past decade (Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur) have all worn guards … Perhaps there is some way the Canuck brass can convince Luongo to do the same.
And I’m not worried about the severity of Luongo’s injury; Vigneault has stated he’s confident he can come back in a short time, and it’s very difficult to injure a collar bone severely. But, for the sake of saying it, let’s say Luongo was hurt for a period of time; aren’t you at least satisfied the Canucks signed Curtis Sanford, who could at least man the ship for a short period of time while Luongo recuperates?
Onto other Canuck injuries; I’m not too concerned about Trevor Linden’s groin, because groin injuries are nasty little buggers that don’t usually last long. I am, however, concerned about Sami Salo’s wrist jam. I think this only proves that Salo is made of glass and can be broken quite easily. How come this guy is always injured? And what about last season, when we saw so many Canuck players felled by injury over the course of the season? Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison, Matt Cooke, Ryan Kesler, Jeff Cowan, Rick Rypien, Mattias Ohlund, Willie Mitchell, Kevin Bieksa are all victims of some form of injury over the duration of last season, and it seems like more often then seasons before Canuck players are getting injured.
Here’s my outrageous theory: Is it the fact that strength and conditioning coach Roger Takahashi isn’t training these players well enough? Hear me out. Long before Takahashi the Canucks had arguably the best NHL strength and conditioning coach in Peter Twist, who later left the team to found Twist Conditioning Inc., one of the most popular training programs in British Columbia. Twist was an amazing coach who seemingly trained the players for war, but now it seems like our top players are not fit enough to last the season. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Takahashi and always will be, but now that I think about it, his methods are a little questionable.
Take rookie training camp this summer for example: Takahashi had the players run through their paces on the Grouse Grind, which has become tradition for rookies, but in a unique (and bizarre) decision, had the players train in a mixed martial arts dojo in July. While I admire Takahashi’s innovative ideas, it’s hard to draw the line between what is good for the team and what is a good experience.
