The Canucks Did Not Give Up On Michael Grabner

From the I-Can't-Believe-This-Has-to-Be-Said Files:

Michael Grabner is having a fabulous rookie season for the New York Islanders. The former Canuck is now leading the New York Islanders in goalscoring, but that's not quite eye-opening enough. How's this: with his hattrick last night, Michael Grabner now has more goals than Alex Ovechkin, Jarome Iginla, and Patrick Marleau. He's currently tied with Logan Couture for the most goals amongst rookies, has a five-game goalscoring streak, and has helped the Islanders to three straight wins with 7 goals in those victories.

It is at this point that Canucks fans and media start to take notice, pointing out that Grabner would be third in goals on the Canucks, just 5 behind Daniel Sedin. Heck, he has more than twice as many goals as Mason Raymond, the Canuck he is most often compared to. And so, there are a few people inclined to ask the question, "Why did the Canucks give up on Michael Grabner?" One such person, unsurprisingly, is Brad Ziemer, who goes so far as to say that "giving up on Grabner [was] a big...mistake."

It's not just that it's a dumb question; it's a flawed question. The entire premise is completely and totally wrong. The Canucks did not "give up"on Grabner.

It's called a trade. You give something, you get something. Trading a player is not giving up on a player. Giving up on a player would be something like waiving him with the knowledge that another team will likely pick him up. Like what Florida did. The Canucks, on the other hand, recognized his value, but put more stock in shoring up their depth on defense, an area that has hurt the Canucks in recent years.

The Canucks are currently leading the NHL in goals scored. A pure goalscorer like Michael Grabner is not what they need. The Canucks are currently missing 3 of their regular top-six defensemen. Depth on defense is what they need. Is this a hard concept to understand? The Canucks traded away something they didn't need for something they do need.

Would it be nice to still have Grabner? Of course. He showed decent chemistry with Kesler and Raymond last season and would have been a nice fit on the second line. Do the Canucks particularly miss Grabner? No. Did they make the trade with the understanding that he had the potential to score 30+ goals in the NHL? Yes.

To be fair to Canucks fans, they have been particularly ruthless to Ziemer on this topic, but for the wrong reasons. They instead say that Grabner is getting an opportunity with the Islanders that he wouldn't have in Vancouver, which is only partially true. Grabner is averaging only 14:03 per night on the island, which is about right for a borderline second line player getting mostly third line minutes. He's barely getting any powerplay time and only 1 of his 24 goals was on the powerplay. Quite frankly, he could easily be playing in the same spot that Jeff Tambellini has filled this season, moving up to the second line at times and filling in on the third and fourth lines as needed. Unlike the situation with Brendan Morrison at center, the Canucks don't have a logjam of wingers that would have prevented Grabner from finding a spot.

But that completely misses the point: the Canucks did not give up on Michael Grabner. They traded him. There is a distinct difference. They traded away a valuable asset for a different type of valuable asset and I am certain that Mike Gillis does not consider it a mistake. I don't either.

Winning is Not Losing

Any team can "trip up" another. Ha ha, puns.

I hate when the Canucks play teams at the bottom of the standings. No good can come of it. As Skeeter pointed out earlier in the season, good teams are supposed to win games against bottom-feeders. It's expected. The problem is, the act of meeting expectations is often met with a little but a slight shrug. No one commends you for doing a satisfactory job. In truth, the real story is exceeding expectations.

Narrow wins over bad teams, like the Canucks' shootout victory at Nassau Coliseum on Tuesday night, do not exceed expectations. In fact, when the Canucks barely get by a team they were expected to defeat, one could say they've barely met expectations. For fans and media who have lost perspective--spoiled as they are by Vancouver's run of stellar play--barely meeting expectations is equally as bad as failing to meet them. For some, a close win over a bad team is the D-minus of sports. It's shameful. The worst part of it all is when people suggest--as one Team 1040 host did yesterday--that it's as bad as losing.

Well, that's just silly.

There are no D-minuses in sports. There are no grades--it's pass or fail. I know hockey fans love to grade their teams; the Canucks' midseason report cards are a rite of passage. But I've never much cared for this meaningless hockey trope. Who cares if Alex Burrows is only a B+? Sports aren't about how you win. They're just about winning. It doesn't matter if you blow a team out or edge them out so long as you win. There's no shame in almost losing.

You didn't lose.

Furthermore, there is no expected victory in the NHL. It's a league with tremendous parity, where any team can beat any other team on a given night. The New York Islanders may be twenty-seven spots behind the Canucks in the standings, but they're not the Washington Generals. Sometimes they win. Statistically, almost every team should beat them, but they beat other teams besides the Devils and Maple Leafs. In fact, in the last two weeks, they posted wins over Tampa Bay, Montreal, and Detroit. In a win over Pittsburgh, they ended Sidney Crosby's point streak.

They can win, even against top teams; they just won't do it consistently.

The Islanders aren't a team to be taken lightly. No team is. Every win is commendable. The fact that the Canucks win so often is even more commendable.

Granted, a run of shaky outings typically means a losing streak is looming, but we can resort to nail-biting and navel-gazing when the losses actually happen. In the meantime, no win is a loss, because winning is the opposite of losing.

I Watched This Game: Canucks at Islanders, January 11, 2011

Canucks 4 - 3 Islanders (Shootout)

The Canucks had a season-high 51 shots tonight, the Islanders had 41; that's 92 shots total. How odd, then, that I found this game, with its scoring chances hither and thither, exceedingly dull. Heck, the shootout nearly matched the entire game for entertainment value. Why so mundane? I suspect some of it has to do with the act the Islanders were forced to follow. They're a pabulum team at the best of times, but in direct contrast with last Saturday's Red Wings, they're duller than airplane cutlery.

The Canucks didn't help, though. Despite keeping rookie goalie Kevin Poulin plenty busy, they played a sloppy, uninspired game. After a strong first period, they slowed down for the last forty, and their defensive coverage was suspect all night long. They looked tired, and I suspect they still are. That's not good. They've still got four more games on this road trip, and I'd like them to win most of them. I'd also like them to be more entertaining than this one, which I watched:

• Just as was predicted, Ryan Kesler played despite his injured thumb. Word was that he might let his wingers take a few draws, and considering Jeff Tambellini and Mason Raymond took four between them, it's probably safe to say Kesler gave them one extra faceoff apiece. He really knows how to cut back. The injury didn't seem to hamper his ability to shoot the puck, either, as he still put a game-high eight shots on net. One of them went in (above). Then he scored the shootout winner. This guy's ability to play through pain is mind-boggling, which, consequently, is what I call the mental exercise I perform when nobody will play Boggle with me.
  

• Former Canuck Michael Grabner seemed determined to make the Canucks regret letting him go, breaking in past the defense on multiple occasions and putting a team-high 7 shots to Roberto Luongo. While none of those shots made it past the goal line, Grabner definitely looked like a threat to score all night. But, before you start navelgazing, take a look at the rest of his stat line. It's blank. Grabner didn't register a single hit, takeaway, or blocked shot, which is kind of remarkable considering everybody else did. Grabs is a uniquely pure goalscorer, so pure he neglects all other facets of the game, including even elementary things like passing. Consider that both he and Henrik Sedin are fourth in goals scored among their respective teams with 9 goals each. Henrik simply has 42 more assists. It's unfair to be compared to Henrik Sedin, but it's just an example of how scorers can be overvalued in some cases. Grabner may be an NHL-quality scorer, but to my mind he'll never be a complete player.
  

• I love Tanner Glass. Part of it is that he agreed to play Scrabble with me. The other part of it is because he does stuff like this. Glass's fight may have salvaged this game, giving his team an energy boost when they began to skate on sand. Look at Kesler's excited face on the bench after the tilt--he's amped. Glass isn't the best fighter in the world, but you can see in this bout that he's a smart fighter. He patiently waits for Matt Martin to open up a bit, then he just slides in and pushes his off button. Hard. With his fist.
  

• A word on Luongo's all -star snub. He doesn't care. At all. He's been before, and he fought to avoid the game two years ago when his wife had a baby. Hey, guess what, she had a baby this year too! I suspect we'll eventually find out that Luongo had a chance to go to Raleigh, but asked to be excluded in order to spend time with his family. [Edit: Ben Kuzma says this isn't the case.] He doesn't want to be in North Carolina. Few people do. Half the state didn't, which is why there's a South Carolina. I would much rather spend a weekend with my newborn son than go to North Carolina. Heck, that's just one on a long, long list of things I'd rather do than go to North Carolina.
  

• Luongo was solid tonight, by the way. Ignore the fact he let in three goals and remember that he made 38 saves. Furthermore, nobody is stopping that John Tavares shot. That was like a summer's day, it was so beautiful.
  

• It may not have been perfectly executed, but it was nice to see the Sedins and Burrows pull off that faceoff play. They used it to perfection so many times last year that everybody's wise to it, which is why we've yet to see it work this season. But my favourite thing about the Wizards of the Coast is that, while they know full well that every defense in the NHL knows what they're trying, they still try it. Unlike Wile E. Coyote, they don't try a plan once, then scrap it forever. Then keep everything in their bag of tricks and just hammer away at the defense's scouting reports. Did you watch video on this? Did your coach tell you to watch out for this?

• Jeremy Colliton seems a bit rough around the edges, doesn't he? He took two silly penalties tonight--one on a hook and one on a hold--and both of them seemed as avoidable as a banana peel on Koopa Troopa Beach. The hold on Henrik Sedin was particularly egregious. If he thinks it's okay to hold a person like that, I'd advise against letting him have a kitten or a bunny rabbit. He'd be like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

• Today I realized we talk about Kevin Bieksa a lot here at PITB, but man, looking at his stat lines these days, you'd think he was Adam Banks. Apart from scoring Vancouver's game-tying goal (on a lucky deflection, but still), he also put up 5 shots, 6 hits, 2 takeaways and a block. Michael Grabner, take notes: this is how you do other things.

• I fell asleep during this game. More interestingly, I fell asleep while fast forwarding the PVR through the second intermission, and when I woke up, Don Taylor was telling me the final score. Not cool, Don Taylor.
  

• The Canucks outhit the Islanders 38 to 24, but didn't it seem worse than that? The Islanders, as currently assembled, are a team of semi-skilled young'uns, severely lacking in hittiness or old man strength. Meanwhile, the Canucks have more old man strength than The Crimson Permanent Assurance.

• The Canucks now sit atop the NHL standings with 62 points, three more than Philadelphia and Detroit, and still with a game in hand on the Red Wings. It excites me, as a fan, to be checking the scores of the other top teams in the NHL rather than simply the teams in our division. I'm not used to being so inclusive. If the Canucks win the Presidents' Trophy, all those Northwest Division titles will seem a bit trite, no?
  

Wildly Untrue Hockey Urban Legends

On a recent visit to snopes.com, I noted that the hockey section of their website is woefully underpopulated by hilariously fake urban legends, crazy rumours, and weird myths. Indeed, the site only has three hockey-related entries, with two of them boringly true. This is incredibly disappointing and, frankly, a disgrace. It's especially disgraceful when a bland sport such as baseball has 20 total entries, the vast majority of them patently false, none of them related to steroids.

To rectify this awful, terrible situation, we at Pass it to Bulis have come up with some wildly untrue urban legends that we encourage you to e-mail to your dumbest and loudest friends. Feel free to add, twist, or distort any of these into whatever form you wish: that is the mark of a good urban legend.

Here presented for your enjoyment and dissemination are 10 Tru Fakts.*

• Famed enforcer and all-time NHL penalty-minute leader David "Tiger" Williams got into his fair share of scraps in his day. This was back before mouthguards were common, and he would often knock out a tooth or two from his opponent. He had a standing arrangement with the crew at each arena to collect the teeth from the ice after each fight and give them to him after the game, usually slipping $50 back their way. He strung the teeth on a necklace that he wore under his sweater.

• Pavel Bure drank a gallon of milk and expelled the milk via vomiting prior to every single hockey game. He attributed his great speed on the ice to this habit.

• Unbeknownst to hockey fans, the NHL, in an attempt to increase hockey's profile in the US, increased the size of the away nets in the LA King's home arena, The Forum, by less than half an inch from 1988 to 1991, leading to inflated point totals for Wayne Gretzky, a high-profile star at the time.

• Vancouver Canuck Sami Salo once ruptured a testicle blocking a slapshot. The injury occurred in a playoff game against the Chicago Blackhawks on May 9, 2010. The Canucks went on to win the game and Salo returned to action the following game despite the testicular trauma.

• In college, Bill Clinton was a standout in hockey at Georgetown University and was offered a contract by several NHL teams, including the New York Rangers, but chose to instead go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. The hockey program at Georgetown has since collapsed due to lack of funding.

• In 2002, former Vancouver Canuck Harold Druken once paid a $500 fine entirely in Loonies to then General Manager Brian Burke. Burke did not take the joke well: Druken was traded shortly after to the Carolina Hurricanes on November 1, 2002.

• There is a human skeleton in the foundations of Nassau Coliseum, but it wasn't due to a construction accident. The owner of the New York Islanders and New York Nets at the time, Roy Boe, famously loved urban legends and believed that all great construction projects needed one. He tasked one of his employees, Harvey Ringwold, to acquire a skeleton to place in the building's foundation or walls. Ringwold procured the skeleton from the NYU School of Medicine under the pretense of outfitting the Coliseum's medical room.

• Prior to the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals in 1984, Grant Fuhr was asked by a white reporter, "How long have you been a black goaltender?" Fuhr's response: "I've been a goalie since I was nine. I've been black all my life."

• From 1972 until 1987, the rule for icing did not actually appear in the NHL rulebook. A clerical error in printing a new edition of the official NHL rulebook in 1972 led to the rule accidentally being left out. It continued to be called as per usual and wasn't noticed as missing until the 1987 edition.

• The 100 Grand Bar, a popular chocolate bar introduced in 1966, was named for the two-year $100,000 contract Bobby Orr signed with the Boston Bruins as a prospect. The contract made Bobby Orr the highest-paid player in league history. Nestlé's US headquarters were located in Boston and introduced the chocolate bar after the contract signing, intending it to be a short-term product as a joke. Instead, the bar became a success, with consumer demand forcing the 100 Grand Bar into permanent production.

• Gordie Howe famously met his wife, Colleen, at a Detroit bowling alley. Lesser known was that Gordie Howe was an internationally ranked ten-pin bowler, once reaching as high as 17. It was said that he could have had a long professional career in bowling if he hadn't been so good at hockey. He frequently bowled under the pseudonym "Gordon Hoyle" to avoid attracting attention.

* Tru Fakts are in no way related to true facts. Pass it to Bulis cannot be held responsible for any injury incurred while using Tru Fakts.

Eastern Conference Rankings

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(Updated - October 1, 2009)
With only two weeks remaining until the 2009-10 regular season opens, it's high time for Conference rankings. And yet, as DGB successfully pointed out in his article about NHL Predictions, an 82-game NHL season is almost impossible to predict with any sort of accuracy. So many factors are involved, and so much can change. Injuries, trades, breakouts, and slumps are all next to impossible to control for, and, unless you have an inside with all 30 teams, it's tough to know what the locker room chemistry is like around the league. With that in mind, I have decided to rank the teams in terms of classes, or tiers [...]

Each Conference is divided up into four different groups; Tier I - The Leaders, Tier II - The Contenders, Tier III - The Disruptors, and Tier IV - The Scavengers. The Leaders are teams who are well balanced, have had recent success, and are poised to lead their respective divisions. The Contenders are teams who should push for the top, but may have a few question marks to satisfy before being promoted. The Disruptors are those teams who have had solid rosters, and could upset some of the higher-ranked teams, but have a lot left to prove and will need to to fight out each other to make the post-season. As for The Scavengers, they are the teams who will try to pick up wins however they can, but will likely stay out of the Playoff picture for most of the season. So, without further ado:

Tier I - The Leaders
Boston Bruins
Pittsburgh Penguins
Washington Capitals

Tier II - The Contenders
New York Rangers
Philadelphia Flyers
Ottawa Senators
Carolina Hurricanes

Tier III - The Disruptors
Atlanta Thrashers
Toronto Maple Leafs
Montreal Canadiens
Tampa Bay Lightning

Tier IV - The Scavengers
New Jersey Devils
Florida Panthers
Buffalo Sabres
New York Islanders

Not happy with your team's ranking? Let me have it in the comments section! Western Conference rankings will be up later in the week, and all of the rankings will be reviewed in depth next week, starting with the Atlantic Division.

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Heatley Trade and Other News

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Dany Heatley is now a member of the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks got a pretty good deal too, though, which is a statement that makes sense if you've been following along. San Jose managed to send back a near-equal amount of salary (they got about $0.2 million more in Heatley), and they only had to give up Jonathan Cheechoo and Milan Michalek to get him. (SJ also gave up a 2010 2nd Rounder in exchange for a 5th Rounder.) Michalek and Cheechoo bring grit and determination to Ottawa, as well as offensive potential. Cheechoo certainly isn't the 50-goal scorer he once was (with emphasis on the once), but Michalek is a budding star. As for the Sharks, one thing is certain – they just became an even bigger threat to capture the Pacific, and maybe even the President’s Trophy again. Interestingly, the last team to win the President’s Trophy in back-to-back seasons also won the Stanley Cup the second time around. Can you name the team? [...]

NHL Recent Rundown:

The Vancouver Canucks found several replacements for Mattias Ohlund - they traded with San Jose for Christian Ehrhoff and Brad Lukowich, as well as signing UFA Mathieu Schneider. For the Sharks, who got back a couple minor leaguers, the deal was seen as little more than a salary dump. For the Canucks, however, the move makes their defence corps able to stand up to the re-tooled blueline of their biggest division rivals, the Calgary Flames. Vancouver also locked up star netminder Roberto Luongo, signing him to a 12-year deal worth $64 million.

The Tampa Bay Lightning signed Alex Tanguay to a one-year deal. With Tanguay on the left side of Vincent Lecavalier, and St. Louis on the right, the Lightning have an awesome first line - and they're all from Quebec.

Peter Forsberg was included on Team Sweden's 2010 Olympic roster invitation list. He plans to play this season for Modo of the Swedish Elite League, but a strong Olympic performance (and the ability to stay healthy) could mean an NHL comeback.

As the Pittsburgh Penguins await the construction of the new arena they'll be using in 2010-11, The Consol Energy Center, a couple of other teams are making pushes for new building as well. The New York Islanders are trying to get their Lighthouse project passed, and the ownership of the Edmonton Oilers have also announced plans to purchase land and build.

The Oilers also signed unrestricted free agent Mike Comrie to a one-year deal. Comrie, an underachiever last season for the New York Islanders, was traded at the deadline to the Ottawa Senators where he managed only seven points in 22 games. He's a touchy player - tons of scoring upside, but a genuine knack for inconsistency.

Eastern Conference rankings will be up by Tuesday, with the Western Conference following shortly thereafter.

Don't forget to follow on Twitter for quick NHL updates! LindHockeyFile on Twitter

- Josh Lind

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