Wow. Huh.

So Mike Gillis and the Vancouver Canucks opted to make a deal with the Florida Panthers. Unlike the Indiana Jones franchise, it seems that making yet another trip to the well has paid off for the Canucks, as they obtained defenseman Keith Ballard and forward prospect Victor Oreskovich in exchange for Steve Bernier, Michael Grabner and the Canucks 1st round pick in this year’s draft.

Many folks are screaming bloody murder over the deal, believing that the Canucks were ripped off or overpaid. I will admit that I was initially one of those folks, although I will attribute that to my being a fan of Grabner and being a little irrational when hearing that the Austrian had been traded. Having given it some more thought, though, I actually really like the deal. Broken down, it makes a lot of sense and isn’t as bad as one would think.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Sorry for no post after Friday’s game. There wasn’t really a whole lot to hash over on that game: everyone was brilliant and the Kings played like hot garbage. I hate blatant cheerleading (just subtle, restrained cheerleading, durrr) so no point in doing a wrap-up.

I gotta write about tonight’s game, though. First off, I’d just like to get something out of the way really quickly. Some of you may have noticed I participated in a roundtable over at Canucks Corner. In that roundtable, I made a couple of predictions. Regarding the Canucks, this is what I wrote on April 14th (scroll down to 8:47 or so):

So I’ve made mention in a couple of other blog posts that I was going to be doing up a piece talking about the Canucks bottom six. And why not? There’s been a lot of talk lately about certain members of the Canucks third and fourth liners, most of it laced with profanities.

Steve Bernier needs to be shipped out of town, Kyle Wellwood should be benched and so on and so forth. While I’m not in disagreement that the bottom six players are bad, I would argue that there are reasons why our bottom six hasn’t really been performing all that well that extend beyond ’such and such player sucks.’

At least that’s what I’m hoping to get across here.

It comes down to six.

The bottom six, specifically. Tonight’s game was a frustrating one that saw the Canucks put forth a rather solid effort, but found themselves lacking a bit in the ‘puck luck’ department. Unfortunately, were it only that, the Canucks probably would’ve had something to show other than a regulation loss to the Bolts.

What a fascinating game, today’s matinee affair was.

Partially because I’ve been high on cold medication all day and it took me a while to gather my thoughts, but also because this was pretty much the reverse instance of what went down with the Montreal game. The Canucks had a rather poor start (which saw the first goal being scored by the opposing team and which saw yet another early penalty leading to said goal) but were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat thanks to an absolutely stellar effort from Roberto Luongo, who responded well after being sat Thursday in Ottawa.

Hey, that’s a pretty good impersonation of a post-game Canucks fan, there Spezza!

…

Do I have to talk about the Canucks game?

Really?

Okay. There’s a lot of hating, complaining and wringing of hands going on with tonight’s loss. Oh no, we’ve lost two in a row. The end of the world is coming and the Canucks are sinking like the Titanic.

So the road trip goes on. Despite some late game heroics and a lucky double minor in the latter half of the third period, the Canucks were unable to come from behind yet again against the Montreal Canadiens. Or should I say the Canucks could not find a way to solve Jaroslav Halak and subsequently are STILL without a win in February.

The Canucks continue with their topsy turvy play as they came into tonight’s matchup suffering an ugly loss to the St. Louis Blues. Sound familiar? Yeah, I realize that these recaps sound like I could have simply did a Find and Replace in Word, but better the Canucks win a game than lose all the time. But, tonight’s game did have two guys dressed in green spandex (see above), so this most assuredly wasn’t a repeat!

Looking back, you could probably say that that there were a lot of odds stacked against the Canucks winning in Raleigh.

There was the fact that it was a criminally early start, part of Gary Bettman’s efforts to forcefeed the NHL to markets that are less than interested in watching the game, sometimes at the fans expense.

There was Alain Vigneault’s decision to start Andrew Raycroft in lieu of Roberto Luongo, who had looked great in back to back starts against the Devils and Flyers. Given how crazy the Canucks schedule will be coming up, you can’t necessarily blame Vigenault for wanting to give Luongo an afternoon off.

Man, where to begin with tonight’s game? It was bowling shoe ugly…

As I wrote in my recap last night, the Canucks needed to play a full 60 minutes and get away from the sloppy play that allowed an injury riddled and exhausted Oilers team to make it a game after going down 4-0 in the first period.

Taking 3 penalties in a row is a recipe for disaster against a team like the Sharks, particularly when your PK has been having problems like it has for the Canucks. Factor in a team that played the night before and a powerplay that was firing blanks by going 0 for 4 and the Canucks could ill afford to suffer poor play.