Post Game 7 Thoughts
Almost a week later and I still think it sucks that we lost the Stanley Cup. The team played valiantly, we should be proud of them, but they didn’t have enough left in the tank in the end.
However, part of the reason they didn’t have enough left was they way they got manhandled by Boston. The refs pretty much put away their whistles and this was to the advantage of the much larger Bruins. It certainly seemed like the NHL wanted Boston to win, the owner is a buddy of Bettman’s after all and part of the reason that weasel still has a job. He deserved everything that was thrown at him. The NHL couldn’t make Boston win, but they sure did what they could to skew the outcome in the Bruins favour. Chara mauls Henrik who eventually falls down and they both get a penalty. Yeah right. Whatever. Rome gets a four game suspension because he was half a second late on what other wise would have been a great open-ice hockey play. Okay, fine, set a new precedent, but then shouldn’t it apply to both teams. Boychuk breaks Raymond’s back and gets zilch. It was interference, it was taking advantage of a vulnerable player and, it was a head shot and technically it was even hitting from behind. And it resulted in a significant injury. All those criteria were applied in the Rome suspension but not to Boychuk. I could go on and on too. Total BS. I would like to see the outcome of a Canucks vs. Bruins series if they called penalties like they did in the regular season, even with a gimpy Kesler. If he was healthy, no contests.
And if having to watch that game 7 wasn’t bad enough, we then had to witness a riot in our downtown. This has caused feelings of anger and disgust and embarrassment and revenge. The people who participated in the riot were serious idiots. The people who instigated the riot are serious a-holes. The participants need to pay, but the instigators need to be put away.
It seemed like most of the participants were living out some sort of grand theft auto dream. Life momentarily turned into a video game which is why it looked like they enjoyed it so much. Pathetic that people lose that much touch with reality.
However, the city is going to have to take a major part of the blame for this fiasco. If you are going to invite a hundred thousand people to watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup on giant screens then you better have more than 12 police and a couple horses to manage the crowd. There should have been a thousand riot police patrolling the area the entire time. Duh. Of course the criminals were going to take advantage of this situation and of course the alcohol-fueled youth who just lost the Cup were going to go crazy and whoop it up once the criminals got the fires started. Mob mentality has been well documented.
It would have been a lot cheaper to pay for all those riot police then it is going to be to pay for the judicial system to deal with this mess. I just hope the other municipalities like Surrey are going to help pay for the fixing of this mess. It seems that 80% of the idiots who participated were from the suburbs. They even came prepared for the riot, they all seemed to have bandanas and things. They knew it was going to happen, they even talked about it on Facebook. Why did the city officials not know?
EA Say Canucks in 7
According to EA, back in October 2010, when they ran their simulation engine, the Canucks won the President’s Trophy and met Boston in the finals, winning in 7 games with a heroic effort by Daniel Sedin.
Yeah whatever you probably say, but apparently the EA simulation engine predicted 13 of the 14 playoff series this year and narrowly missed a perfect record as San Jose edged Detroit in their game 7.
That is a little creepy I must say. Although if I were a betting man I would seriously consider following their prognostications.
They are going to run their simulation engine again on Monday with updated info. If Boston wins I don’t want to know about their prediction.
But if I was to make a prediction I would say the Canucks will win in 4 games. We won the first series in 7, the second in 6, the third in 5 so naturally we will win this one in 4.
Okay, maybe that is optimistic but I am sure we are the better team. We have great special teams, they don’t, especially their power play which has been abysmal. We were the highest scoring team in the league this year and allowed the fewest goals and we proved against Nashville that we can play that defensive, boring hockey that Boston is going to try against us.
Let’s go Nucks!!! You can do it. This is for all the marbles. A Stanley Cup for Vancouver will make the Olympic gold in hockey look like a novelty act.
As you can see, the rest of Canada, which we here in Vancouver officially refer to as A Good Place To Be From, has been busy reminding us that they do not like our hockey team.
What they really mean is they do not like Vancouver.
This, of course, is nothing new to Vancouver. The rest of Canada has always hated us because we’re the prettiest girl in school, and the less pretty girls -you know, the kind who dress all in black and think they’re intellectuals because they looked up “existentialism” -like to think we are dumber and shallower than they are, which normally we would respond to, except that we’re too busy right now brushing our hair. We’re getting ready to go out. We have a totally bitchin’ night ahead of us. We’re going out dancing.
The rest of Canada says, oh no, it’s not you. It’s nothing personal. It’s not envy or anything like that.
We just don’t like your team, the rest of Canada says. They’re not Canadian.
Source ↑ www.vancouversun.com/…
V.c » Well said Pete. I almost coughed up my spicy tuna roll and Blue Buck ale as I read this. I cheered for those Alberta teams as they made their Cup runs a few years ago but i certainly won’t make that mistake again.
Round three begins. Let’s Go Nucks, it’s time to slay some sharks.
The Osama Bin Laden is Dead Party
Talk about vanquishing demons. Score one for the US of A. They finally took down Osama Bin Laden, the guy behind 9/11 in case you didn’t know.
My friend lives in D.C. so he went to the White House after hearing the news and took this photo of the Osama Bin Laden is Dead Party that spontaneously erupted.
The Demon Has Been Vanquished
The hockey gods sure have a funny way of showing their love for the Canucks. Those two last games were a ridiculous amount of drama. Send that script to Hollywood; the good guys finally prevailed but only after a battle of epic proportion.
This series against Chicago was like a horror movie. They were Jason. (The hockey-masked killer of Friday the 13th infamy if you have never had the displeasure of watching one of those movies.)
Unbelievable.
I am soooooooooo glad to have made it past our arch-nemesis to move on to the second round. It would have been soooooooooo wrong to have lost to Chicago again for the third year in a row.
Thank you Burrows. You are now etched in the cultural memory of this city for a long time. Burrows was a fitting OT scorer. He would have had nightmares all summer if we had lost after he hit the post in game 6 and didn’t do his patented backhand move on the penalty shot in game 7. There is also his back-story that makes him a fitting hero for the city.
And as for the talk about which was bigger, the Olympic gold last year or this win; it isn’t even close. The Canucks beating Chicago in game 7 stomps on the head of the Olympics. The Olympic gold was nice seeing as it was here, but the 2002 win was way bigger and more important because it was the first in eons and because Canada didn’t win with the pros playing in 1998. 40 years of Canucks emotion was released after this win. Who knows how many suicides there would have been last night if the Canucks had lost. I know I wouldn’t have gone that far, but could you imagine how much life would suck today if the Canucks had lost.
Canucks, we forgive you if you lose game 1 against Nashville, but after that lets kick some Predator butt. Oh yeah!
By around 2020, the age of the ever-smaller chip will come to an end — and we’d better prepare for it.
Around 2020 or soon afterward, Moore’s law will gradually cease to hold true and Silicon Valley may slowly turn into a rust belt unless a replacement technology is found. Transistors will be so small that quantum theory or atomic physics takes over and electrons leak out of the wires. For example, the thinnest layer inside your computer will be about five atoms across. At that point, according to the laws of physics, the quantum theory takes over. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you cannot know both the position and velocity of any particle. This may sound counterintuitive, but at the atomic level you simply cannot know where the electron is, so it can never be confined precisely in an ultrathin wire or layer and it necessarily leaks out, causing the circuit to short-circuit. According to the laws of physics, eventually the Age of Silicon will come to a close, as we enter the Post-Silicon Era.
Source ↑ www.salon.com/…
V.c » This is great, my computers will no longer be obsolete after 2 years.
Canucks had their best season ever, winning the President’s Trophy with 117 points and get rewarded by meeting their arch nemesis the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round. Win and they will be have overcome a huge psychological hurdle but lose and this team will be devastated. It might even have to be blown up. But this is the best team the Canucks have ever had, they don’t run around in their own end anymore, they have a great PP and despite the loss of Malholtra they have an exceptional PK. They also led the league in goal differential with 262 for and 185 against.
For the sake of my 88 year old grandmother, this better be the year.
Predictions for the first round:
- Vancouver over Chicago in 5
- San Jose over Los Angeles in 4
- Detroit over Phoenix in 7
- Anaheim over Nashville in 7
- Washington over New York Rangers in 5
- Buffalo over Philadelphia in 6
- Boston over Montreal in 6
- Pittsburgh over Tampa Bay in 7
All Signs Pointing to a Stanley Cup
This morning TSN’s Bob McKenzie tweeted something to the affect of ‘MTL hosts Olympics in 76, lead in points and win Cup in 77. CGY hosts Olympics in 88, lead in points and win Cup in 89.’ VAN has accomplished the first two steps of the trifecta so obviously we are on track to hoist the Stanley Cup in 2011.
And if that isn’t enough, this morning The Province had this astrological report that pointed to the fact that all the signs are in favour of a very positive year for the Aries, Roberto Luongo, who celebrated his 32nd birthday today, April 4th. Apparently Luongo’s planets are all lined up perfectly.
What more could we want?
Destiny is on our side. I just hope the team stays healthy and the refs call things, er, fairly.
On another note, if you have had the displeasure of seeing Rebecca Black and her parental bought video for the musical abomination, complete with auto-tune, that she calls Friday, then you might take pleasure from this Canuck-themed parody.
Time to Blog Again
Time is the essence. Never seem to have time to do any blogging anymore. Twitter is way more convenient, just have to write a sentence instead of a paragraph, but even that I seldom do. I think I’ll try to do the odd blog post again, playoffs are just around the corner after all and although I am interested in all kinds of Vancouver-issues, it is the Canucks that are my true love when it comes to this city by the sea. This city has some growing up to do as Lance and Matt argue in their written dialogue that is posted on The Tyee. Interesting reading if you care about urban design issues and Vancouver.
Did Olympics Make Vancouver Better?
Two noted urban thinkers, Lance Berelowitz and Matt Hern, conduct a free-wheeling back and forth about the future of their city and the legacy of the 2010 Games. Berelowitz is an urban planner, critic and author of Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination. Hern is a rabble-rouser and author of Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future.
Trevor Linden to open fitness centre
From developing building to developing bodies, former Vancouver Canuck captain Trevor Linden is branching out in the business world.
Linden, who retired from the National Hockey League in 2008, announced today he is opening a fitness centre in Coquitlam this winter. Club 16 – Trevor Linden Fitness is scheduled to open in January 2011 in Eagleridge Place at 2635 Barnet Highway.
According to a news release, the facility will be a “welcoming, state-of-the art facility designed for the average person.” The release went on to say the atmosphere will be “friendly, the intimidation factor will be reduced and exercising and getting into shape will be fun.”
Linden plans to charge $15 a month and says it will be the lowest average membership prices in the industry.
Source ↑ www.vancouversun.com/…
V.c » When I heard Trevor Linden had an announcement about his post-hockey player career I was hoping it would be more exciting than this and that it would have something to do with the Canucks, but this isn’t actually nearly as lame as it first sounds. If it was just a ritzy fitness club appealing to Hummer drivers than that would be really lame, but the fact he plans to only charge $15 per month, that is awesome, that is a third the price of a community centre. I hope there is a Club 16 my neighbourhood soon.
