Vancouver Canucks

Even the return of Devin Setoguchi and Casey Wellman couldn’t save the Minnesota Wild from being shut out 3-0 by Roberto Luongo and the Vancouver Canucks. Goals in the first period by Daniel Sedin and Alex Burrows carried through into the 3rd period when an empty netter by Manny Malhotra sealed the Wild’s defeat. There was little for us in the State of Hockey to be positive about tonight beyond the return of Setoguchi and Wellman. While the PK unit was effective, even that provided concern during an unexpected 3 on 2. The Wild’s previously dominating forecheck barely made an appearance [...]

BUT STILL MANAGE TO LOSE. The 2-1 lost the the division rival Canucks was tough. It was the first game in my estimation that the Wild gave a solid effort for a full three periods. Defensively the team looked good, Backstrom was very good in goal. The Wild figured to be a offensively challenged team before the season started but with Havlat,Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Petr Sykora and Cal Clutterbuck all out the Wild are pretty well offensively castrated from a roster point of view. They only mustered 18 shots on goal and not many of them were good scoring chances. The news [...]

Roberto Luongo was perhaps the best goalie in the division equalled only by the Wild’s Niklas Backstrom. At 30 years old he was signed to a 12 year, $64 million contract that should be the last of his career. After relatively unimpressive stints with the Islanders and Pathers from 1990-2006 when he was traded to the Canucks. In exchange for Luongo, Lukas Krajicek, and Sergei Shirokov the Pathers received Todd Bertuzzi,Bryan Allen,and Alex Auld.  To this point it looks like the Canucks got the better end of the trade with Bertuzzi  only playing a few games for them and with [...]