It's Wednesday October the 4 around 12:41PM and

The Vancouverite Canucks Blogger: Matt Cooke, Shiny Canucks Chew Toy?

I thought I’d disguised my small hockey town roots but apparently Jackson is too clever for me. So now I’ll be putting my shameful past to good use, writing about the Canucks for The Vancouverite. I will cover the odd stat, but I prefer discussing salacious team gossip. I mean really, would you rather know who’s leading the team in points, or that Nonis maintains his girlish figure with secret ballet classes? That’s what I thought. And now you’re picturing Nonis in tights. I’ll tell you right now, you don’t get that kind of mental treat from a stat.

Ok, so I don’t have anything quite that good but you get the idea. I do gossip. Not stats. And if you're lucky, and well behaved, I'll be dishn' out some hockey about once a week, since the "suits" here at The Vancouverite pay about as good as Socialist Worker.

Hockey season is here and the Canucks’ bandwagon is rolling out at typical breakneck speed. And how are things looking for our boys? Well, after Nonis’s little roster fillet, things are quite a crap shoot.

Nonis kicked of trade-athon 2006 by ditching the coach. This season hair plugs are out and the French are in. It had to be done, but I’m going to miss Crawford’s thinly veiled game night rage. I mean, how cute was that clenched little fist he’d stick in front of his mouth to hide the profanity? Precious really.

As for actual coaching chops, Vigneault has a pretty good record and he is known for bringing the best out in his players. However, I find Vigneault imminently more difficult to pronounce than Crawford and I kind of miss Plugs. Ah well.

After kicking Crawford to the curb, Nonis really got going. His biggest trade of course sent Bertuzzi et al to the land of the early bird special. Sad yes, but the loss of Nazzi’s hetero life mate could be a good thing for the team. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed The Bert, just not the feminine style of play he adopted after his little incident. Too much emotional baggage with that one.

For better or worse, the Bertuzzi trade left a huge offensive hole in the first line. Then we lost losing Carter to the magic of free agency and the serious line re-organization began. For a while it looked like Matt Cooke would be taking Bertuzzi’s old spot, but Vigneault pulled out a new combo late in pre-season. The first line is now looking to be Nazzi and The Sisters with Cooke, Morrison and Bulis rounding out the second.

Vigneault could be onto something, but I still like the idea of putting Cooke beside Naslund. Sticking the team’s biggest pain in the ass beside its leading scorer reeks of clever to me. Kind of like putting something shiny on the ice to distract the other team from our golden boy. Plus, Cooke proved he could hold his own on that line during Bertuzzi’s league imposed vacation a few years ago.

The mass off season exodus also hit the defensive line hard, most notably with the loss of free agent Jovo. Fortunately we managed to hang onto Salo and Ohlund and picked up some promising fresh meat in Luc Bourdon and Willie Mitchell.

In the most exciting team news of all…….Nonis finally checked on the definition of goalie and found us a real one. Let’s just hope that our team’s great white hope Roberto Luongo lives up to expectations. Thanks to Lunogo’s price tag, our back up goalie is a 38 year old farm leaguer. Neat.

Overall, it’s shaping up to be a very interesting season. Win or lose, I think The Canucks will be a team you actually want to cheer for this year. And I predict that our grab for a playoff spot won’t be nearly so feeble this time. We’re definitely not going in above #7, but really, that’s just not our style.

The Canucks hit the ice tomorrow, (Oct 5, 2006 4:00 PM) at Joe Louis Arena against the Detroit Red wings.

Posted by Katherine, The Vancouverite Canucks Blogger | Link |