Shack's Sunday Canuck Take - Canucks should stop playing favourites - 03/18/12

I know I made a promise to you all that I would be the oasis in the dessert that is the negative writing of the local scribes and for the most part I’ve held true to my words. 

If you’ve read most of my takes and some of my articles you’ll know, I’ve repeated the same mantra, there’s no point in worrying about how they’re playing now, it’s the playoffs that matter.

On Friday though, I ripped into Canuck management for their unwillingness to properly protect the Sedins and make them feel secure on the ice.  Today I’m going to reveal my other pet peeve with the way the Canucks are run.

Before I get into it though, I just want to assure you my opinion on the Canuck's chances remains the same, they’re an excellent team with as good a chance as any other team in the league at winning the Stanley Cup, better than most.  Most of their recent struggles can be attributed to the lack of urgency created by two and a half months of almost meaningless games.

But in any good relationship there are always disagreements, and there are two areas I differ from management in their philosophy.  The first being that the Canucks need to protect the Sedins a little more vigorously, I discussed this here.   

Is it possible to do an article on potential Canuck
issues without Bobby Lou being involved? 

And the second issue, which we will talk about today, is how Vancouver has been using two players lately that haven’t completely earned their spots in the line up.  From my perspective, that’s a dangerous game to play because the coach risks losing his players respect when he makes decisions based on management desire and not merit. 

The two players I’m talking about are Marc-Andre Gragnani and Roberto Luongo.  Both players have started lately for reasons other than being the best available option and I don’t think that serves the interests of the team.

In Gragnani’s case, he’s playing despite being about the 9^th best defenseman on the team. 

If Gragnani plays in his 80^th regular season or playoff NHL games before the end of the season, the Canucks retain his rights as a restricted free agent.  If he doesn’t reach that number, he becomes an unrestricted free agent. Gragnani has played 72 NHL games so far in his career so he will need to slot into eight more games in the final 11 regular season or the playoffs for the Canucks to prevent him from walking at the end of the season.

Anyone who watched Gragnani start the six games previous to the Columbus game realizes he’s a very borderline NHL defenseman at this point in his development.  He makes a decent first pass and skates well, but he’s weak on the puck, he’s not strong defensively, and his swashbuckling offensive forays are more Yellowbeard than Captain Jack Sparrow.   

Although I’m not expecting Andrew Alberts or Aaron Rome to go all Rudy and quit the team in their senior season because they’re not dressing for the final game, I’m sure they might be a little perturbed they're sitting while a lesser talent is playing.

In the case of Luongo, it’s the biggest talking point in this city since they chose the Real Housewives of Vancouver.

Every Canuck fan knows Luongo’s goaltending has more ups and downs than a bride’s nightie, yet Alain Vigneault steadfastly maintains Luongo is ‘his guy’, the undisputed number one, regardless of how he is playing at the time.

Would Vigneault use this for his everyday travels? 

It’s like Vigneault spent a ton of money buying a Hummer for himself and bought his wife an affordable Ford Edge.  After driving both for a while he realized the Edge was indeed better for city driving but steadfastly refused to switch cars for no other reason than he spent so much on the Hummer— it would be humiliating to admit his mistake.

Personally, I’m not on Team Cory or Team Roberto, I’m for using whichever goalie gives the Canucks the best chance to win on any given night. 

Roberto Luongo has stretches like we witnessed in January and February where he plays as well as any goalie in the league.  He also goes through periods like we’ve seen lately where we long for the days of Dan Cloutier’s consistency. 

Despite what the Lui haters say, when Lui is on, he’s as good as anyone in the league.  The problem is, when Lui’s off, he not only doesn’t qualify as one of the better goalies in the league, he’s nowhere near the best goalie on his team.     

This is what confuses me and likely almost all Canuck fan’s. Over the last two seasons, there have been times when Schneider has clearly outperformed Luongo.  It could be argued this year, Cory has consistently outperformed Lui. 

Is there a single Canuck fan who doesn't think
Schneider deserves at least a few more games?

The numbers all back Schneider. His save percentage of .932 ranks him 3^rd in the league and his goals against of 2.12 put him 7^th while Luongo’s numbers of .916 and 2.48 rank him 18^th and 21^st respectively in these two categories.  


Further, it’s not as if Schneider’s numbers have been inflated against the lesser lights of the league.  He’s started at home against Chicago twice and tough road games against Boston, Nashville, Detroit and San Jose.

Despite Schneider’s refusal to verbally express anything that might cause controversy, his play has done all the talking for him. From any sane point of view, Schneider has earned the right to at least a larger share of the workload and perhaps even the lion’s share on occasion. 

From any perspective outside the executive suites at GM Place, it appears management is starting Gragnani for contract reasons and Luongo either because they want to justify the salary they’re paying him or because they’re afraid he’d lose his confidence if Schneider gets the bulk of the starts. 

If Canuck fans had a vote I’m sure neither of these player would get the start.

But this is not a democracy and Alain Vigneault and Mike Gillis have earned the right to run the team any way they choose.  Considering the unprecedented success of the franchise since these two teamed up, they have earned autocracy of the team.  We’ve come a long way from the day’s of Bill Laforge’s Teams Pride, Hustle and Desire (oh man, was that a disaster).

No it’s not up to me, you or anyone not part of the team management structure to decide what’s best for the team however, I can’t help but wonder if management’s seeming arrogance in selecting the players for their starting roster won’t become an issue within the dressing room.

The Canuck players are extremely professional and they almost always say and do the right things.  It should be a concern though that  players might get discouraged when management makes decisions based on anything but how to help the team win a game. 

Players are smart, they know for themselves who’s earned the right to start and who hasn’t.   Anybody whose played on a team where the coach’s son or the guy running the team gets extra shifts despite better options being available, knows how divisive that can be for a team. 

Sometimes I wonder who Homer would start. 

He definitely would have cut Gragnani.

If you haven’t you can always watch this episode of The Simpsons to see what happens when Homer starts Bart instead of Nelson on the Springfield peewee football team.  Needless to say, the happy ending happened only after Nelson was re-instated as starter and Bart went to jail to keep Nelson playing the final game— but I digress.

If you watched Wednesday’s game against Phoenix, you saw how Vancouver came out and absolutely dominated the first 10 minutes.  It was probably the best 10 minutes the Canucks have played in a month.  Then Luongo gives out an inexplicable rebound right out front from a weak shot from the boards, Phoenix scores and you could almost see the players go limp.  It was like they were saying, ‘are you kidding me? We bust our humps to get a two goal lead and you’re gonna do us like that?!’ 

Vancouver never regained that same intensity level for the rest of the game and were outscored 4 – 2 from that point forward.

I’m hopeful one of two things occur down the stretch: either Canuck management starts playing their best players regardless of contract status or their fear of a certain someone’s precious feelings.  Or the players are professional enough to ignore these outside distractions and focus on the task at hand, but that will be tough to do if Lui continues to struggle and still starts.

Maybe if that’s the case, Cory can quit before the big game only to return in time for the last period and give a big speech a la Shane Falco, leading the team to victory.