medicine hat tigers

Throughout this season, I’ve asked myself this a dozen or so times and I’m sure you have as well: What if the Canucks continue to alternate wins with losses, slowly yet strategically move away an old player at a time and actually have a seven game playoff series, or worse….they win one? Earlier in December, the Nucks had the best % chance of landing Auston Matthews in the 2016 Draft. They just aren’t giving up on this season and I’m afraid they might do something stupid like make the playoffs again.

Honestly, how hard is it to #tank? Jim Benning knows that for it to work successfully he has to create situations where they CAN’T WIN!!!!

Jimbo is slowly wiping away contracts, trading away things that aren’t working and I’m not quite sure if Willie Desjardins has a heavy hand in the current look but this whole Medicine Hat Tigers thing is looking a bit suspicious. Of all teams, the Tigers? If Benning tried to assemble former players from the likes of the Oshawa Generals, London Knights or Kelowna Rockets; he might have more success.

Don’t get me started on the non BC issue.

As of Jan 13, the Canucks are a win out of 7th in the West and 8 points back of LAST….dead last overall. Figure that out. The Pacific division is much to blame for this season as it basically is giving hope to everyone in the division except the Oilers; and even then, when McDavid comes back who knows?

Just when you think the Canucks were about to really slide into first overall glory, they start winning again. They start breaking win streaks, they’re getting contributions out of guys that hadn’t scored in months, a timely injury to Ryan Miller yet again forces Jacob Markstrom into the starters role and wouldn’t you know it, he’s thrived!

Or how about guys like Linden Vey and Sven Baertschi? Vey was sent down at the beginning of the year and we all assumed that might be it, well I did anyways; he finally gets a chance to be called up and he’s actually getting involved, ya I’m stunned too! With Baertschi, he was in and out of the lineup as a healthy scratch and then the pairing with Bo Horvat came and they started to chemistry (I think we were looking for the words jel/gel, click or connect); they’ve combined for 16 points since December 18th.

Can this team do ANYTHING right?

There are literally tens of reasons the Canucks are surviving this season and not planning a special draft jersey for Mr. Matthews, one of which, actually two, are the Sedins and their continued production. At 35 years old (sigh, he mentioned their age again, EVERYONE mentions their age), Henrik and Daniel have 36 and 40 points respectively and if Jannik Hansen stays healthy all year they both should be in the mid 80’s or so by year’s end. Stunning.

They’ve carried this team when no one else could even be lifted and now we find out their thugs too? The recent brawl with the Panthers, Daniel Sedin losing 4 teeth and missing approximately 3 shifts; yet still able to confuse and frustrate opposing defenders. These guys are still so good and when they leave THAT’S when the true rebuild will begin.

The Canucks don’t have it in them to #tank. They aren’t the type of organization to completely give up and start over, stubborn in a way but I’m happy they give us hope; not Stanley Cup hope but like that Barack Obama poster kinda hope. We continue to beg them to move the Higgins’s, Sbisas’s, Veys’s and even the Vrbatas’s so we can see this team get in a position to start over. Some even say Milan Lucic would help that, I’m still not sure that’s such a great idea….but not the Kenins’s, they’re plural already.

Benning is finding ways to go moneyball on the NHL and he might be hitting singles just enough to start scoring runs. Yes, a complete baseball reference in a hockey article. Im multi-faceted in sports cliches so watch out! At the beginning, Sven Baertschi looked like we might be losing a 2nd round pick after not seeing quick results but if he ends up being Horvat’s permy linemate, a 2nd was an absolute deal.

Remember when we tried to get Emerson Etem in the Ryan Kesler deal? Well Benning got him for Nicklas Jensen or Jensen depending on the day of the week and how you prefer to pronounce it. It will work out as a something for nothing deal as Jensen wasn’t going to ever be a Canuck. Who is this guy and will we continue to hate all his decisions? Some people will but Benning is quietly shutting everyone up one sneaky move at a time.

He’s real sneaky.

So tanking probably isn’t in the Canucks cards this year anymore and if they had pulled the trigger on the season before Christmas, the team might be in deep deep trouble ala Bart Simpson

That was a nice stroll down memory lane. But back to what I was talking about, something something tanking right? In typical Canucks nation fashion, we all tend to jump the shark a bit too much and demand immediate answers that aren’t always practical, possible or rational (the last one might be redundant).

Seeing this season out as a team, a fan base and media as a whole might help us to learn a lot of what this team is actually capable of. It could be a sour, smelly garbage bin of despair or it could be the bonus fry at the bottom of your Arbys bag that you are so happy was there for you at the end; regardless no tank, potential big surprises and no one on the team we need to refer to as “18 year old (insert player here)” or “(players name with a y at the end then Hockey)”.

This is the Canucks. Its usually painful, frustrating, confusing and exciting every day of the week. Just chill out. Nothing new to see here.

Follow me on twitter, not because you have to but because you can write it off on your tax return: @always90four

This has defintely been a season of adventure in Vancouver with Willie Desjardins. Under his tutelage he has created a new way of doin the bizniss. He has found a way to get Zack Kassian beastin with the Sedins, he turned Ronalds Kenins into a guy that PLAYS like he’s two people but then benched him for a few games, not sure there. Willie D said nice things to Alex Edler and got him back to being a top defensman and he has said on many occasions the team and its players are “real good”.

Recently, there was a great little clip of the real good’s Willie D has busted out this season and he just kills it. On the twitters Monday night, I revealed the scale of really good by Willie D. This was a first draft and probably won’t be the last.

So after thinking about the scale’s meaning, there is actually some relevance to it. What classifies “real good?” Is it a hit of Sedin wizardry? Is it Bo Horvat flipping the puck over Antti Niemi after burning, Brent Burns? Maybe it’s Eddie Lack stealing the show night after night when the team in front of him decides 1 or even no goals is a pretty good buffer.

So I think there needs to be some substance to this scale so I bring to you the ….aw crap I need a new line to make this important:

– THE WILLIE DESJARDINS “REAL GOOD” SCALE –

It ranges from 1-10 (1 being real good, 5 being really good and 10 being unreal) The 10 is pretty much like a Unicorn, affordable parking, or a setup pass from Ryan Kesler. These simply do not exist. But that’s fine. OK we could maybe say a Stanley Cup win would be unreal, that would be fair.

So let’s break this down:

1-3) Real Good – This is basically your typical WD comment on any prospect, someone that scored a goal that night, a good hustle on a shift or really anything that resembles something we all classify as alright. It can cover anything that happened in a game.

This is a regular occurance as we hear “real good” a lot.

4-6) Really Good – Also known as really well or real well. This area is something along the lines of maybe a shutout, a two or more goal performance by a player capable of such feats, Zack Kassian getting a GWG and a big hit in the same game, getting that free drink at Starbucks, a sunny day in Vancouver or snagging the first Bryan Adams compact disc hot off the presses. Any reference to WD’s Medicine Hat Tiger days or the organization in general can be labelled Really Good.

“Really good” isn’t something that is just thrown out there. Its the hockey equivalent of saying the L word to a woman. You don’t just say it, you gotta mean it. You and I can say really good all we want, it’s not the same thing. I said my frozen yogurt was really good, The Departed was really good, deep fried chicken wrapped in bacon is really good. Say it right now, I’ll wait……..see? Great isn’t it. But not the same thing.

7-8) REAL Good – not to be confused with real good. Sure, they’re spelt the same way with some capitalization on REAL but they mean completely different things. REAL Good is on a level of its own; a win where the Canucks actually scored first and beat a hard team like the Ducks or Penguins, the decision to un bench Ronny Kenins and he gets a 1st or 2nd star and maybe bumps up a roster spot in the lineup, or any player on the team that hockey’d out of his mind that night.

This hasn’t happened really much at all this year so we know it’s going to be good when a REAL Good gets dropped.

( Just to clarify what hockey’d or hockeying or hockeys means; it’s basically anything productive in hockey. It doesn’t correlate with Corsi or Fenwick but it can be used to describe pretty much any hockey play. Goals, assists, fights, hits, being fast, good passing, etc. These are all hockeys. )

OK nitty gritty time!

9) REAL GOOD – Sooooo, you can see this is the all caps real good version. Willie is most likely furious, uncontrollably excited, possibly just won a playoff round as an underdog or his wife just told him he gets a man weekend and when he gets home she’ll be waiting….

And finally,

10) UNREAL – So far, Eddie Lack is the only recipient of UNREAL. As I stated before this is reserved for the most epic of real goods. Its basically untouched. This is grandpas 80 year old scotch, its the first edition Spiderman comic in your safe, its borderline the Kesler beast mode in 2011, the Burrows goal against Chicago, Pavel against Calgary, Luongo arriving in Vancouver, Luongo leaving Vancouver, the first time you played Nintendo, its a fresh Willie D haircut and moustache trim.

Its basically the Stanley Cup being hoisted in Vancouver for the first time with no riot. There isn’t a better feeling than UNREAL. We can all relate to this in one way or another but you won’t see it anytime soon. Now was Eddie’s UNREAL like all these things? No, I believe Willie had a slip of the tongue and probably meant to say Real Good or REAL GOOD.

So now you know the Willie D “Real Good” scale. Keep it in your records, bring it out if you can’t quite figure out what kind of real good WD is describing and make sure you haven’t mixed them up when you’re drinking with your buds. This is real good stuff guys, take it to heart.

Follow me on twitter: @always90four and @hankthetank10