The Fan In Van Podcast & Blog - Matt Lee

Pierre McGuire was on the TEAM 1040 this morning (Wednesday) in Vancouver and he was talking about the Recchi situation. Him and Recchi were texting each other last night before the Canucks/Ducks game and McGuire says that Recchi will likely be traded by Friday. Pittsburgh apparently wants to hand over the reigns of the team to the younger players and they feel that with the presence of such veterans as Recchi, Roberts and Sydor, its hard for those younger players to be that voice in the dressing room. I don’t know what that means for Roberts or Sydor, but so far only Recchi has been told to call up other clubs and work out a trade for himself.

While I like Recchi, I struggle to see where he would fit on this team. The rumours are swirling that Recchi could somehow find his way to Vancouver, but in addition to his “steep” 2M dollar price tag and with the Canucks having 2.68M in space, I still can’t see Recchi coming this way because:

1. Has had issues with Alain Vigneault back in their Montreal Canadien days
2. He’s old
3. Would be nothing more than a PP specialist or a checker, which the Canucks have a lot of
4. He’s old
5. More than likely would find himself on a line with Kesler and Pyatt, replacing Isbister, but that line has been so good defensively
6. He’s old
7. The Canucks could most likely pursue a younger, more skilled forward down the line

Did I mention he’s old?

TSN: In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman explained that the league may not give its players permission to compete in the Sochi, Russia games. ‘’It is a strain on the players, on the schedule and on our fans here,'’ Bettman told Reuters. ‘’It has an impact on the momentum of the season and the benefits we get tend to be greater when the Olympics are in North America than when they’re in distant time zones.”

Yeah, Bettman is still brain dead. And perhaps we didn’t need this example to illustrate the fact, but let’s crack this baby open and talk about why exactly the NHL’s commissioner continues to ruin the NHL.

Gary Bettman says that the NHL players are strained when going to the games. This is the same man who threw the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks to London in September to play in the NHL season opener and another game after that.

Here is what Gary Bettman is saying: “We’re going to send our two California teams across the ocean to London to promote our game, but we’re not going to send our top NHLers to Russia for the Olympics, one of the biggest sporting events in the world and probably the event which will give our game the most exposure.”

How Gary Bettman still rules the NHL world is beyond me.

In the sports media realm, it’s very easy for both writers and fans to be negative. The Vancouver Sun reported today all the negative feelings they had to Todd Bertuzzi, and friends of mine were quick to jump all over the Sudbury native with the utmost hatred. And perhaps, to some extent, for good reason: After all, it was a combined effort from both Bertuzzi and former coach Marc Crawford that led to the collapse of the West Coast Express empire, and ultimately a combination of both idiocy and laziness which led to Bertuzzi’s timely departure. But with all that being said, this Canuck fan still holds positive ties with Bertuzzi.

And perhaps the sudden re-capturing of Markus Naslund’s game is seemingly ironic; Naslund, who spent 99.9% of the time on the ice with Bertuzzi in the early 2000 years, lost his game after Bertuzzi departed. Now, he’s had a brilliant November which has allowed him to regain the confidence he lost when he lost Bertuzzi to a trade. Now the two will be playing as opponents for the first time since their Pittsburgh/Long Island days.

Todd Bertuzzi is a superstar, an enigma, an icon and an idiot all in one. It’s amazing to see two different kinds of Bertuzzi’s in the NHL; the one who was the best player in the NHL in 2003 and the one who is injury-riddled and mentally off his game in the present. Bertuzzi has yet to play a span of a full season since his breakout years and yet to put together a streak of goals post-Vancouver. How could this guy’s game fall off so dramatically?

Steve Moore. Marc Crawford. Media and fan expectations. The new NHL. The explanations are about as endless as the amount of damage the West Coast Express generated in its heyday.

How are fans going to react to Bertuzzi’s “homecoming”? Some say they’ll jeer, others say they’ll cheer. It’s hard to tell. Most likely we’ll see a mixed reaction.

But fans shouldn’t be judging Bertuzzi based on his last years as a Canuck alone. They should be judging Bertuzzi based on his career as a Canuck. No one could power his way through a defence quite like Bert. And no one could take on the ilk of Barret Jackman and Chris Chelios with his strength. And quite frankly, no one was quite as loved and hated like Todd Bertuzzi.