We, as in, the you: the part of the us that is reading this, not the team that has put the yous/wes/us into this predicament.
Not wanting to rehash our oh-so-long-and-frustrating ineptitude on what is now closing in on 4 decades worth of Franchise History, I’ll just leave it at “What else is new?”, and try and preach to the masses to do your best to maintain an even-keel and let things play out.
If it’s any consolation, your team has plenty O’ company when it comes to squads under-achieving and not exactly living up to expectations. One only has to open up a Blog or Thread on Ottawa, Philly, Anaheim, Dallas or Tampa to find others who are sharing in your frustrations.
While it’s always nice to know you’re not alone, and in truth, there really is no denying that misery definitely does indeed love it's company; however, it does little to help appease things as we sit, here and now.
Doesn’t do Sweet Diddly when it comes to making the pathetic Special Teams work. Nor does it have any effect on who scores the first goal in a game or who has more of them going into the final period. Same goes for better discipline and goaltending statistics and don’t forget about the getting shots through from the point and the need to consistently make good first passes followed by supporting the puck all over the ice. And now, just for a little icing on that cake that is looking less-and-less appetizing by the minute, the Injury Curse seems to have announced its return to VanCity.
These are the real problems facing the Canucks as they return home from a trip that was not exactly awe-inspiring, after teasing us early into believing (almost?) that we were pretty good.
Oh dear lord, what did we do to deserve all this, year, after year, after year? Why do you hate us?
Well, other than having poor judgment when it comes to picking a Sports Team to follow their every move, it’s hard to come up with much criticism for the fans other than maybe some unusually high levels of band-wagoness amongst the masses. All we can do is try our best to remain patient while this team tries and figures out exactly what it is they are, and how they need to play to have success.
It’s still very early, and it doesn’t take much to turn things around. A little 3 game winning streak would catapult this team up the standings. Heck, if Leclaire hadn’t stoned them in the 3rd with at least 5 huge saves on premium scoring chances, they would be 1 game above “500” (now a useless stat, but it works here!) after 6 of their first 7 games on the road and everyone would probably have been pretty satisfied with that, if not even very happy about it.
I joke about the numbers of bandwagon jumpers in Canuck Nation, but if Leclaire doesn’t do what he did as the clock was ticking down the other night in Columbus, that SINGLE game’s result could have potentially changed the mind-set of thousands and thousands of people, not to mention how much better the players themselves would be feeling about things.
People like myself would be spewing about how the team is looking good, creating a foundation to build upon after surviving the almost two week roady with 3 (THREE!) wins entering the 3rd behind (how do you spell C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R?), while countless others would be ensuring that The Parade Plans would still be in full swing.
That’s the difference between one game! Not only that, but just for kicks, if you really boil it down it was only few saves by a goaltender … a goalie, who up until that point had been struggling more than ours have. No wonder it’s so tough being a fan of this team.
This is a team that has had a huge turnover, both this year, and in the last 2 years (14 new faces were on hand starting the 06/07 Season). There has been a massive “changing of the guard” top-to-bottom and I truly think that things are on the upswing around here, but it’s gonna take some time for everyone to figure things out, including us.
We all know it takes time, unfortunately that doesn’t do much to diminish the need we all feel for our team to do well now. The investment we put into our team is very demanding financially, but more testing is the emotional investment we commit towards them; and like the players themselves, we need to try and not get to high or low along the way of a long season.
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