Blue Jackets 5 – Canucks 4

Yes, the title of this article is right. What a friggin’ stinker. The Canucks once again squandered a 4 – 2 lead allowing Columbus, a god-awful team who had one only 5 road games this season, 3 straight goals in the third period. Emotionally the team was flat and uninspired right off the hop.

Star defenseman Ed Jovanovski was back and assisted on the first two gaols. He played pretty well all night but was pretty much the only Canuck really doing his job other than tried an true Trevor Linden and Chubarov who scored the other two Canuck goals. If this team were a horse I’m pretty sure it would have been put down and buried by now.

As far as goaltending goes Cloutier (out with an apparent hip injury) and Hedburg (out for a walk when he’s supposed to be tending goal) have both sucked lately. If you cannot count on your goaltenders who can you count on?

Your defensemen?

Not on this team you can’t. Brent Sopel, obviously with other things on his mind, continues to play atrociously giving the puck away constantly. He should sell Sopel ‘turnovers’ to McDonalds because Canucks fans aren’t buying them.

Every game since the Bertuzzi incident (there were even hints prior to) has been about the forwards on the team having to beat Cloutier/Hedberg and their band of clownishly bad defensemen who are scoring on their own net. With Bertuzzi the chances were better to stay ahead of them. Now that he’s out taking his very well earned anger management classes, saying ‘I think eskimos are smug!’ (42kb wav) the team just can’t keep up. The new additions really aren’t doing much and there’s already talk of Sanderson going back to Columbus for next season. I think he forgot which team he was on last night.

Someone needs to light a fire under these guys or there will be NO playoffs. I’m not sure Crawford is the man for the job as he never seems to give a shit that they’re losing. He gives his press conferences in the same monotone voice – win or lose.

Thank God the right teams ahead of the Canucks have been losing or else the team would be in even more of a mess and out of the running altogether.

I know the Berrtuzzi thing has affected the team in many ways, but come on. It’s over. Let’s move on and get going again. I don’t want to have to cheer for another team in the playoffs… Flames – yeesh … Leafs …. argh … Detroit … not in a million years. I’d rather cheer for Colorado for God’s sake.

Here’s the official recap of last night’s game. A caveat: read only on an empty stomach unless you’re a bulemic who needs to purge.