To borrow a popular quote from Sportsnet’s favourite most dry news anchor Jason Portuondo, the Vancouver Canucks are currently playing efence, because there ain’t any D.
You see, I think I’ve solved the mystery as to why the Vancouver Canucks have been playing subpar hockey in the first two weeks of the 07-08 campaign. From the get go of the season, everyone always asked “Where are the goals going to come from?” and “How do you plan to solve your offensive woes?”. Now, the Vancouver Canucks have solved their goal-scoring problem but created another by forgetting how to play defence in front of Roberto Luongo.
The Canucks have scored the 12th most goals in the NHL and even have the 4th-best powerplay in the league. The problem is, the team is ranked 4th in goals-against and their once-great penalty killing unit is 18th in the league. Moreover, the team is 26th in plus/minus and have scored a mere eight even-strength goals.
The stats don’t lie here, folks. The Canucks, who last year had the identity of being one of the best shutdown teams in the league by playing stifling defence and scoring by committee in the latter half of last season have suddenly become the 2003 Vancouver Canucks, only with new jerseys and some guy named Luongo in the net. Luongo himself is starting to bring back bad memories of one Dan Cloutier … who was that guy again?
But make no mistake, there is ample amount of time for the Vancouver Canucks to rectify these problems. The Canucks themselves were below .500 come Christmas and still finished third in the Conference last year. Mind you, a 33-win run in 41 games may be hard to duplicate, but it shows that there is more than enough time for the Canucks to right the ship and make some noise in the West.
Unless your the Edmonton Oilers. Then it’s all bad.
