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.
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 9th best defenseman on the team.
If Gragnani plays in his 80th 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.
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.
The numbers all back Schneider. His save percentage of .932 ranks him 3rd in the league and his goals against of 2.12 put him 7th while Luongo’s numbers of .916 and 2.48 rank him 18th and 21st 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment