Canucks simply mediocre
By JIM TAYLOR
Sun Sports
VANCOUVER -- Having fallen Tuesday to the formerly Flying Frenchmen of Montreal -- a team so collectively inept that the morning paper didn't even list them in the NHL standings -- the Vancouver Canucks regrouped yet again yesterday while the local media wrestled with the question that has plagued them for months:
When are we going to see the real Vancouver Canucks in stretches longer than one period or, oh, blessed occasion -- an entire game? When is this team going to play up to its potential?
Here's a thought: What if it already is?
Is it not time for a collective media head-shake? How tough is it to figure that a team that sits ninth in a field of 13 after 60 games of a possible 82 might be there on merit? Where does it say that this is all some terrible cosmic accounting error on the part of an overworked Great Scorer who'll notice His mistake any day now and set the Canuck stars in their proper courses?
Repeat after me: This is not a good hockey team in a slump. This is a mediocre hockey team performing down to its potential.
There. Was that so difficult?
And it's not that hard to justify the position. Just look at the roster. Look at it dispassionately, and tell me it rates up there with the top four in the Western Conference or the top five in the Eastern.
Pavel Bure is a marvelous player when he's right, but he isn't. Not this season. He's still firing away (he's taken 256 shots. Alexander Mogilny, second on the club, has taken 130), but he's not busting into traffic the way he used to. An injury as devastating as the one he suffered last season has to heal in the head as well as the knee. The Rocket will re-launch, but don't expect it until training camp.
Esa Tikkanen has 10 goals in 57 games, he's minus-seven, friends who've isolated on him say you could clock his time between hits with a sundial, and he's unhappy making better than $1 million.
Trevor Linden is the Canuck you'd want your kids to emulate, a hard-working, talented boy next door. But he is not a superstar, and has always labored under the weight of other people's unrealistic expectations. On a team where he just had to play, he might flourish. This isn't the one.
Mogilny could be the superstar, better all around than even Bure. It says a lot that he's leading the team in goals and points and lives every day under accusations that he's dogging it. And he's so good when he wants to be that maybe it's not a bum rap.
The goaltending is decent, and would be better if the defence wasn't Jryki and the Tugboats. Sore-backed Mike Ridley has been a godsend. Night in, night out, Marty Gelinas defines work ethic. Russ Courtnall could still dazzle, and probably will once he gets gone.
But the talent is short, the chemistry's lousy, the team logo is a pout, the fight song a whine, and because it would trigger massive change, missing the playoffs might be the best long-term gift they could give Canuck fans. Don't worry: They're working on it.
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