Search for: "jbotchford"

Five biggest mistakes the Canucks made this season

Posted on May 22, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

If the Canucks were to put together a think tank, they’d probably need a report from a subcommittee to recommend the agenda, size and leader of the committee which would take part.

It’s a team that likes to take its time. Call it navel gazing, building castles in the air or even self-indulgent. The end goal was always admirable. They wanted to be prepared for anything. Probably even an invasion of Lizard Men.

When Mike Gillis was tapped as general manager, it took him four weeks of meetings to conclude he wanted Alain Vigneault to stay on as his coach.

He called it then “an extraordinarily important” decision, even though he didn’t interview anyone else for the job.

Just imagine what he calls the coaching decision left staring him in the face after the Canucks’ second straight first-round faceplant.

Evidently, breaking up is hard to do.

In the past, the time the team is taking to pull the trigger, one way or another, would...

Botchford: Bad contracts not just a Canucks’ thing

Posted on May 15, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

As second-round playoff hockey begins simmering around the NHL, there is still no joy in Mudville.

It’s been nine long days since the Vancouver Canucks last played, and would anyone be surprised if there are nine more before there’s word on Alain Vigneault’s future?

OK, that could be a bit much.

At least the wait to learn Vigneault’s fate is keeping fans distracted from the cruel and unusual punishment of another summer of Roberto Luongo speculation.

If it’s any consolation, the players at the Luongo poker table should have changed. After the embittered, some would say personal, negotiation with the Toronto Maple Leafs, it’s unlikely the Canucks or the Leafs will be willing to go back down the Luongo road.

The Leafs have their guy in James Reimer — they think — and the Canucks should have options. And not just the Philadelphia Flyers, who were kicking Luongo trade tires at the deadline. There will be a lot of moving goalie chairs soon...

Canucks: Under the Microscope — Kevin Bieksa

Posted on April 30, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Every game day, Province Sports takes a closer look at an issue facing the Canucks. Today, Jason Botchford investigates Kevin Bieksa’s impact on the team.

Go by the numbers and you can make the case that Kevin Bieksa is the Canucks’ most important player.

Pretty simple, right? They were 23-8-4 with him in the lineup this season, and 3-7-3 without.

Yes, well, numbers lie.

That’s not to say Bieksa isn’t going to be a key to this entire series. He’s a right-handed shot and the Canucks have precious few on their blue-line. To start the playoffs, it’s just Bieksa and Frank Corrado representing the righties on the depth chart.

Lose Bieksa, and this team’s balance is thrown off like it was overcome with vertigo.

But this isn’t 2011 and the Canucks are actually far less reliant on Bieksa. This is a good thing and has been part of a long-term plan.

Bieksa averaged nearly 26 minutes a game during the 2011 postseason run, on a...

Is this the last stand? Sedin factor could be turning point for Canucks

Posted on April 29, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

It’s the final week of the regular season, and the Canucks have locked themselves into the Western Conference’s third seed. It’s their fifth straight division title.

The Sedins have been here before. So many times. But this time it feels different.

After this summer, they will turn 33 years old. They have one year left on their current six-year contracts. For the first time in their careers, the end is closer than the beginning.

They’re not the fresh-faced kids who got their first taste of the NHL playoffs a long 13 years ago. Henrik has been in 95 playoff games since. He can’t help but wonder, how many games does he have left?

The Canucks have nine players who are 30 years old or older. Another two, Chris Higgins and Derek Roy, will turn 30 this year. The last time a team with this many grizzled 30-somethings won the Stanley Cup it was 1994 and it was New York Rangers.

There’s a reality...

Canucks: Good as he is with Kesler, isn’t it time Roy centred the third line?

Posted on April 19, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

DALLAS — One of the Canucks’ regrets from how last season ended was the way they prepared for the playoffs after a series of injuries.

After the past three games, you may wonder if history is repeating itself.

The Canucks spent months searching for a third-line centre. But after acquiring Derek Roy, head coach Alain Vigneault has moved his new top-six centre to the wing for three games.

In some alternate universe where the Canucks have another centre they trust, it may be a decent idea. Put the playmaking guy on Ryan Kesler’s wing and watch them generate offence.

But in the world we live in, they don’t have anyone. There’s just no one they have faith in to centre a third line. That’s all that should matter. Loading up a second line is not going to work if the third line doesn’t exist, and that was the case in Dallas.

On Tuesday, de facto third-line centre Andrew Ebbett got whipped...

Painfully patient Canucks GM has little margin for error

Posted on March 26, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Vancouver GM Mike Gillis better wake up.

If he’s going to get an aging player who was good a couple of years ago he’d better hurry before the Pittsburgh Penguins acquire them all.

Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero had his fans applauding his moves to get Brenden Morrow and Douglas Murray, but NHL executives won’t have quite the same reaction after seeing him deal three draft picks and watching a B+ prospect go for two wilting question marks.

If this is the cost of a couple of dubious complementary pieces, what exactly is it going to cost to get a good player?

Maybe the experienced but worn and frayed Morrow and the big but plodding Murray are exactly what the Penguins need to edge them over the top. They are definitely the type of moves which will be lauded as long as the Pens are in the playoffs. They are trades fans of contenders often pine for because they involve name players who...

Schneider looks slick in 3-2 win over Blues

Posted on March 19, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

There’s a reasonable explanation as to why head coach Alain Vigneault threw down the goaltending gauntlet before Tuesday’s game.

Not only did he manage to rip his most recent starter, Roberto Luongo, he managed to put everything of the shoulders of his latest No. 1, Cory Schneider.

He clearly knows what most have seen from the Canucks during the past month. The Canucks have one period in them every night.

It sure wasn’t the first on Tuesday.

After eight days without playing, which he spent re-working his game with goalie coach Rollie Melanson, Cory Schneider started out as slick as he’s been this year.

He needed to be. The floundering Canucks, who came into the game having won five of their past 16 games, had what was maybe their worst start of the season. They were outshot 15-3 by St. Louis. They were out-chanced 8-1.

They looked out-classed, and they should have been embarrassed. They played like it after the first intermission, thought....

Kesler news came too late to keep Volpatti

Posted on March 2, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Kevin Bieksa is back skating, but unlikely to play Saturday against the L.A. Kings.

Tom Sestito is a different story. He has to play.

The bruising forward the Canucks claimed off waivers from the Philadelphia Flyers will replace Aaron Volpatti in the lineup. Bizarrely, the Canucks lost Volpatti when they put him on waivers just hours before they found out Ryan Kesler had a broken foot and would miss the next four to six weeks.

If they had the Kesler CT scan earlier, one he was given for peace of mind about his sore foot, they likely would have kept Volpatti.

Instead, Volpatti was picked up off waivers by the Washington Capitals, meaning the Canucks lost a fourth-liner, who was also their best hitter. They also lost their best defensive centre with the Kesler injury.

To replace Kesler down the middle, the Canucks have undergone a significant lineup shakeup up.

They decided to send Andrew Ebbett back to their AHL affiliate. It’s expected Mason...

Canucks sneak snoozer with 1-0 road victory over Nashville Predators

Posted on February 22, 2013 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

NASHVILLE — The Canucks 1-0 against Nashville was a game only grinders, and plugs could love.

And Bary Trotz. Maybe Alain Vigneault.

The Canucks coach at least got his two points. Hockey fans, however, had to write lines on the chalk board. Isn’t that what happens in detention?

That’s how watching the game felt. Actually, watching it was probably too cruel for kids.

One photographer called it “the most boring game ever played.”

No one was arguing with him.

The Predators were at their joy-killing best Friday, and the Canucks, tired, and generally out-of-sync this road trip, were all too willing to oblige.

Roberto Luongo was great in the first period. The rest of his team was out of it, managing just three shots on net in the first period, and one of them was a dump in.

So, where were the Canucks? Maybe at a Carrie Underwood concert. She wasn’t at the game. She obviously knows more about hockey than anyone realizes.

Vancouver...

Mason Raymond signs contract to play in Sweden

Posted on December 26, 2012 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Mason Raymond is either getting in before the rush, or he’s being pro-active in trying to make sure his game isn’t a moth-eaten wreck when a NHL season begins.

Raymond has signed on to play for Orebro in Sweden’s second-tier Hockey Allsvenskan, which has surfaced as a go-to league for locked-out NHL players.

To start, it’s an 11-game, month-long contract which begins with Raymond’s first game on Jan. 3.

On the surface, waiting until now to go to Sweden appears to be a strange decision. The NHL and the NHLPA appear two to three weeks away from a resolution this season to their bitter labour dispute.

Most expect we’ll know whether there will be a season before late January.

So why go now?

For starters, Raymond isn’t exactly the planning type. When the first weeks of the NHL season were cancelled Raymond said he had put zero thought into what he was going to do. He claimed he didn’t even know whether he was...

Schneider gives up on playing in Europe

Posted on November 13, 2012 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Cory Schneider has nearly given up hope.

That’s of playing in Europe. There’s not much chance now, unless the season is cancelled.

Of course, that is not completely out of the question, especially with the way a wind change has altered the dynamics in the NHL labour stalemate.

Schneider is baffled by the current situation, which has developed into a street fight to the finish over players’ contract rights.

Even after the sides agreed revenues will be split 50/50, the owners are seeking significant changes to entry-level deals, contract-length limits, arbitration rights, and free agency.

Is that all?

The owners claim they won’t budge, eliciting a predictable, emotional response from the players. They’re angry.

“They’ve already got a billion dollars and now they want the most restrictive contracting rules in sport,” Schneider said. “It seems a little heavy-handed on their part. We’re willing to talk, but it doesn’t seem like they are.

“It’s very frustrating. We feel we’re close and they come out and say, ‘No,...

Jaw-dropping AHL show in Abbotsford wins new fans

Posted on October 21, 2012 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

There was some-thing harmonious about the NHL going dark and what happened in the third period of an AHL game an hour outside of Vancouver.

What the Abbotsford Heat needed, they got Friday. A terrific hockey game with drama, intensity and jaw-dropping performances from some players withy dynamite potential.

They got a packed house that was just noisy enough to help breathe life into a game - a 3-2 shootout win for Chicago - that frankly didn't need much tire pumping. They got a moment too, a Roman Horak breakaway. The centre who played 60 games with the Flames last year, knifed his way through the heart of the Heat, before Wolves' Eddie Lack snuffed out his scoring chance with a brilliant save.

The crowd responded with chants of "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie."

Sure, they were cheering for the visitors. But for a moment, hockey was alive in Abbotsford, even if it is not well.

There were 3,800 on hand for the first game...

NHL proposal would hurt teams with long-term deals

Posted on October 17, 2012 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

There wasn’t panic or rage over at Rogers Arena with the collective bargaining clause that threatens to work like a punch to the Canucks’ salary-cap gut.

There shouldn’t be. The so-called Roberto Luongo rule — or Ilya Kovalchuk rule, take your pick — is just a proposal at this point. And it’s one which, even if ratified, won’t start having an impact until this next CBA expires.

But what a proposal. It works like a time machine in an attempt to rewrite history. Remember the resolution the NHL reached over long-term deals in the Kovalchuk case?

Settled, right? Old news, correct?

Well, the league would like to reopen the case.

The so-called back-diving deals, like the contracts signed by Luongo, Kovalchuk, Marian Hossa, several in Philadelphia and two in Minnesota, would get a significant, long-lasting wrinkle if commissioner Gary Bettman has his way.

Essentially, in deals longer than five years, the average cap hit will continue to count after the player retires for...

Canucks Bieksa and Raymond coaching kids

Posted on September 25, 2012 by admin in Province Hockey | No comments

Count Kevin Bieksa as one of the hopeful ones. Count the kids he’s going to surprise on Thursday among the lucky ones.

With the start of the regular season all but lost, Bieksa remains confident, despite a bargaining standoff buried in bleakness.

Hoping his NHLPA reps will “give a little,” he believes a deal between the entrenched NHL owners and its players can be reached in the next month.

That rosiest of predictions still means the 82-game season won’t start on time. Reality is, if a deal isn’t agreed to by the end of this week, regular season games will likely begin to be cancelled.

Even if lightning strikes and the two sides shake hands Friday, it will probably be another week, at least, before an agreement is ironed out.

For now, Bieksa is going to enjoy parenting his kids and he just may be coaching yours.

“We’re going to be dropping in randomly on kids’ practices,” Bieksa said. “I don’t want to ruin...