The Awful Human Being Quiz Will Suss Out the Awful Human Beings

Most Canuck fans are good people. They just want to see their team win, and they're pretty used to that not happening. As a result, they're resigned, they're relaxed, and they have a tendency to keep their heads. Unfortunately, they are only the majority of Canucks fans, which means that, somewhere, there is a minority of insane, violent, awful human beings who happen to share a love for Vancouver's hockey team.

A word to this minority: we don't want you. You're bad. Go elsewhere.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: am I bad? Am I an awful human being? Perhaps. But we at PITB don't just want to leave you in the dark. We would like very much to help identify you. And then shun you.

With that in mind, we spent the weekend creating this very scientific quiz, which should help to evaluate how awful you are. It's only three questions long, so you should know if you're an awful human being within five minutes:

1. It's 1994. The Canucks have just fallen one goal short of winning the Stanley Cup, bringing great pride to the city of Vancouver with a performance for the ages. Do you:

a) Congratulate the team on making Vancouver proud

b) Destroy Vancouver

2. It's 2004. Todd Bertuzzi has just broken Steve Moore's neck. Do you:

a) Blame the guy who broke a guy's neck
b) Blame the guy whose neck just got broken

3. It's 2011. Theoren Fleury has just espoused his opinion that the Canucks are primed for a first-round playoff upset. Do you:
a) Respectfully disagree with him
b) Enable child molesters by persecuting a victim for speaking out about it

Yeah, if you answered B to any one of these three questions, we'd prefer if you took your fandom elsewhere. Oh. And if you answered B to all three, you're clearly Satan.

By the by, if you're a non-awful Vancouver fan with a question you think might help skim out the dreck, by all means, leave it in the comments.

Phil Kessel Was Picked Last, Not Picked On

After much speculation about who would get picked last at the NHL All-Star Draft, Phil Kessel suffered the ignominy of being the final guy. For the concerned: he'll live. In fact, I thought the only embarrassing thing about Kessel's turn as Mr. Irrelevant was the way the NHL tried to pacify him. In an infuriating bit of babying, host James Duthie coaxed an ovation out of the audience, verbally consoled Kessel (who couldn't have cared less) and then gifted him $20,000 to a charity of his choice as well as a brand new 2011 Honda CR-Z.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the hundreds of children picked last in schoolyards across the country that day were given nothing, save a wedgie and an insecurity complex. Come on. These are NHL players, not grade-schoolers. Picked last does not mean picked on, and this was a room full of grown men capable of making that distinction. By reaching to console Phil Kessel, the NHL turned a relatable moment into another instance of millionaire ego-stroking.

Kessel didn't need to be given any consolation prizes. He was already at the All-Star Game. Know who wasn't? Tanner Glass. Where's his car?

Simply being invited was good enough for Kessel, and he said as much to Duthie. Not mentioned, but also a fairly decent consolation, was the fact that Kessel makes $5.4 Million a year, and if he wanted a new car, he could have paid cash for one. I hate talking about player salaries, but Kessel really didn't need that car, and you could tell by his reaction. Have you seen what happens when normal people are given a car? Their heart explodes. Did you see what happened when Phil Kessel was given a car? He smiled appreciatively, like he'd been given a gift card to Denny's.

It was a startling lack of perspective for the NHL to A) showcase Kessel's corresponding lack of perspective and B) take a very human moment like being picked last and turn it into another example of the divide between athletes and normal people. Most kids who are picked last can be consoled with a trip to Marble Slab Creamery. For a millionaire athlete, however, it had to be much more extravagant than that. Granted, they tried to balance it out by giving Kessel twenty grand to donate to charity, but that's about as meaningful as being given a Christmas present by your baby brother. Yes, I'm sure he picked this out himself.

These guys are still role models, after all. Considering the audience for this event was likely a lot of younger kids, I would have much preferred for the NHL to simply show what a good sport Kessel was being. Everything after that was overkill.

**********

That said, if the event lost some of its relatability with this moment, we can thank Alex Ovechkin for saving the day. The highlight of the draft: Ovechkin's sheer glee at Kessel sitting alone--an image so comical to him he snapped a picture with his phone. Hilarious. Part of Ovechkin's charm is that, despite being one of the best hockey players on the planet, he's also plainly human. His parents live with him; he often gets caught sneaking a peek at the ladies; he can't dance. Heck, is there anything more human than the place where schadenfreude and camera phones intersect? That exact place is where the Internet was born.

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.

Maybe the Blackhawks Were Just Better Than Us

I've said before that Vancouver fans and media often suffer unfortunate bouts of tunnel vision when it comes to the Canucks. A Canucks' win is followed by praise, and a Canucks' loss is followed by blame, but nothing is ever attributed to the opponent. How did they play? Who plays for them? Is anybody on their team talented? Apart from gushing over Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, or tonight, Steven Stamkos, we often assume the guys who play for other teams have about as much volition as the targets in Hogan's Alley.

Recall an instance earlier this season when Alain Vigneault stood up for his defensemen following a game-winning Kings goal: "It was a simple 2-on-2 and two of their good players beat our two good defencemen and that's going to happen." It's incredible to me Vigneault needed to remind people that the Kings have players who can score, even on guys who are supposed to stop them from scoring.

Guys like Roberto Luongo, who takes blame for any goal, regardless of the circumstances. Did you know that a large part of an NHL players' livelihood is scoring on superstar goalies? They can do that.

With this in mind, it's typical that Vancouver's two consecutive oustings at the hands of the Chicago Blackhawks have been painted as little more than collapses, disappointments, or failures on the part of the Canucks. It seems nobody's been willing to consider the opponent, or perhaps even utter the anathematic truth that, even at the Canucks best, the Blackhawks were just better.

The Kurtenblog pointed some of this out a month ago, but let's return to the argument. Consider the offseason turnover in Chicago: up against the cap, the Blackhawks were forced to jettison Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Kris Versteeg, Brent Sopel, Ben Eager, Adam Burish, and John Madden. Among others. Effectively, they lost their entire bottom-six and the brunt of their defensive depth.

How is the former Blackhawks' bottom-six doing for their new teams? Incredibly. Dustin Byfuglien and Andrew Ladd are one and two in Thrashers scoring. More impressive, Ladd has been named Atlanta's captain, and Byfuglien is doing that scoring from the back-end. Brent Sopel leads Atlanta in blocked shots by a wide margin (20 more than the next closest skater), and Ben Eager is tops in PIM and hits. In Toronto, Kris Versteeg is averaging just over 20 minutes a night. He's 5th in goals and points, 3rd in shots on goal, and 1st in takeaways. But the most incredible thing about lost members of the Blackhawks playoff roster is this: they're all still in the NHL, and only Colin Fraser averages less than 10 minutes a night (at 9:56).

Canucks fans celebrated the somewhat sad dismantling of one of the deepest NHL rosters we've seen in decades, while ignoring the fact that their team actually underwent a similar turnover. Our bottom-six is effectively gone too, as the Canucks willfully said goodbye to Kyle Wellwood, Pavol Demitra, Ryan Johnson, Shane O'Brien, Michael Grabner, Steve Bernier, and Matt Pettinger. Demitra, Johnson, Wellwood and Pettinger are no longer playing in the NHL, and Grabner nearly suffered a similar fate after the Florida Panthers, who acquired him in a trade, placed him on waivers at the end of training camp. Steve Bernier has been playing on the fourth line. And Shane O'Brien has the third-worst plus-minus on the Nashville Predators.

I'm cherry-picking stats a little to make my point, but still: one year removed from a playoff series Vancourites label as a Canucks collapse, former Chicago Blackhawks are making names for themselves in the NHL. Meanwhile, former Vancouver Canucks are adding umlauts to their jerseys in Europe.

Do you think this had something to do with the outcome last May? I know we might hate to admit it, but it's possible the Blackhawks were simply icing a better team. In fact, it's more than possible. It's likely. In fact, it's more than likely. It's just true. Yes, we had a Selke candidate; so did they. We had a gold-medal winner; they had three. We had an Art Ross and a Hart. They had a Norris, and a Calder, and a Conn Smythe. And, behind these guys, they had an NHL roster.

It's hard for Canuck fans to see past their own team. We know our guys; we know their shortcomings and their potential, and we expect them to step it up. But, more often than not, we're just fooling ourselves and hoping for an upset. The Chicago Blackhawks team was so good that their bottom-six could be the top-six on other teams. The proof is in the pudding. Vancouver's bottom-six, on the other hand, was so questionable that, six months later, they're the bottom six for teams in Europe. I know it's tough to admit, what with the grudges we hold, but the Blackhawks were an incredible team. The Canucks played them well, but when they lost, we shouldn't have blamed them.

We should have blamed the Blackhawks.

Trevor Linden Lithograph Giveaway in Honour of Markus Naslund

This post and subsequent contest (!!!) is a collaborative effort between us at PITB and the J.J. Guerrero/Chris Golden supertandem of Canucks Hockey Blog.


J.J. Guerrero, Canucks Hockey Blog:

Even as Markus Naslund's career in a Vancouver Canucks uniform was winding down--a career that saw him revitalize a moribund franchise, rewrite numerous franchise scoring records, become the longest-serving captain in Canucks history, and spend countless hours in the community--many fans questioned whether or not his jersey #19 was deserving to be raised to the rafters, whether or not it deserved to hang alongside #12 and #16.

The fact is, many fans have come to compare Naslund's accomplishments with Trevor Linden's and Stan Smyl's. And that's certainly their prerogative. Naslund was an elite level player (an All-Star, Lester Pearson Trophy winner and Hart Trophy nominee), but he was unable to take the Canucks as far into the playoffs as Linden and Smyl. Linden and Smyl played with as much as grit as skill. Fair or not, Naslund was known more for his skill and finesse than anything else.

Because of these differences, however, it's perhaps more appropriate to compare how they connected with Canucks fans. We can debate and dispute stats and playoff runs all we want, but there's one thing that we may all be able to agree on: Naslund connected with Canucks fans who grew up watching the team in the post-Messier era as much as Linden and Smyl did in their respective eras.

Chris Golden, Canucks Hockey Blog:

Having grown up in Vancouver, I've been a diehard fan of the Canucks since Chris' birthday plus one. But there's something about kids from Alberta that I remember the most. I've cheered for an average guy from Glendon, Alberta who went by the name "Steamer." I also hollered "HAR-OLLLLLLD" in the hope that the best 'stache this side of the Rockies (hailing from Edmonton) would lay out to block a slapper. But my first true connection was to a young kid from Medicine Hat.

Harold & Stan were already well into their own careers and I liked them because those were the players my Dad thought were the best. Yet, it wasn't until 1988 when this 18 year old kid named Trevor first donned a Canucks jersey that I truly became excited about the team. He was skilled, yet understood the importance of a blue collar work ethic (as Jim Robson once said "He will play! you know he'll play! He will play on crutches!"). He was exciting to watch and wore his emotions on his sleeve.

But it wasn't just how he performed on the ice that had me enamoured (I'm a confident guy, I can admit that). He may have been from Alberta, but he found his home here on the West Coast of British Columbia. He was the first face of Canucks Place, the player I remember seeing down in the caverns of the Pacific Coliseum talking to the fans, and the player who you'd walk into the most while around town. Some of the darkest days as a Canucks fan were when "he who shall not be named" traded Trevor away and some of the brightest days were after he came back.

And if there were ever an indication that the team got it right when they raised number 16 to the rafters, it'd have to be this: he was always the player that my friends and I ever dreamed we wanted to be when we picked up a stick. And I bet he's still the player younger fans still want to be.

Harrison Mooney, Pass it to Bulis

I watched the Trevor Linden jersey retirement ceremony with some emotional distance, as I never quite understood what he was to Vancouver. It's understandable. In 1994, I was nine; I didn't understand what my testicles did, either. Linden's contributions were a bit beyond my comprehension. By the time I was old enough to understand those contributions--the ones that crafted Linden as the greatest Canuck--Markus Naslund was the guy making them. He was the face of the Canucks; the top draw; the best hope; the spiritual and emotional leader. Yes, Markus Naslund was the greatest Canuck I ever personally witnessed.

And it doesn't matter that he never won a cup; Trevor Linden never won one either. That's not the only basis for greatness. Instead, these guys built their legends on great hockey matched by great work in the community. It's a model for greatness that started with Trevor Linden; Markus Naslund took it and ran with it, and that's where I recognized it. We're all hearing the stories now, about how Naslund passed it to Daniel and Henrik Sedin, and the Canucks are just now reaping the benefits of their great leap forward into a similar role. In that respect, it's important to recognize who Markus Naslund was: the guy that took Trevor Linden's example and turned it into a tradition.

Let me put this in a way that you boomers might understand: Markus Naslund is the Trevor Linden of my generation.

*****

Giveaway time!

PITB is partnering with Canucks Hockey Blog to give away a total of four (4) Trevor Linden lithograph prints. They look like this, (minus the frame):

We are giving away two (2) lithograph prints here on PITB. (CHB is giving away another two prints on their site. One winner will be drawn from Twitter; another winner will be drawn from the comments section.

1) To enter on Twitter, send the following tweet:

RT/follow or enter a comment to win a Trevor Linden lithograph from @passittobulis and @canuckshockey. http://bit.ly/i3yHid #Canucks

2) To enter in the comments section, write which one of Naslund, Linden and Smyl you connected with the most and why.


We'll draw the winners on Tuesday, December 14th, at 7:00 PM, so get your entries in before then.

Rick Rypien Granted Leave of Absence For Personal Reasons

The Canucks announced today that they granted Rick Rypien an indefinite leave of absence for personal matters. This is the second time in three years that Rypien's been granted a leave for personal reasons. It could be a completely separate issue; it likely isn't.

People are wondering what it is, and I hope it stays a secret. If it's substance abuse (as rumoured last time, and only rumoured), it's nobody business but his own. Most of us have a family member or friend that's struggled with substance abuse and it's Hell; there's no need to add a public element to it. And if it's something else, it's still nobody's business but his own.

PITB's prayers go out to Rick Rypien during what must be a very difficult time. Get what you need, Ryp.