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.