Vince Coates
@VinceCoates4
·
1h
“No, I’m always happy,” said Podkolzin. “It’s a great joy to play here. Im lucky. Being in this league is cool. It doesn’t matter how much you play here.There is definitely no need to lose heart. I’m playing in the best league in the world! I go out and have fun.”
Is that the same guy that freaked out on me 9 games ago when I said the coach needs to get canned, and said Green would have them back above .500 by game 20? - I-own_da-Northwest
I would look at Mtl or Ottawa who both need centers. I know he was born in London Ont but if I remember I thought I heard he lived around Ottawa . - VANTEL
Iain MacIntyre
@imacSportsnet
· 1h
Replying to @mattsekeres and @Sportsnet
You know Matt, you were not long ago a serious journalist. Take a look at what you’ve become. I stopped calling people names around Grade 7. I’m not engaging with you for sport. I reached out to you when you lost your job, so you have my number.
Iain MacIntyre
@imacSportsnet
· 1h
Replying to @mattsekeres and @Sportsnet
You know Matt, you were not long ago a serious journalist. Take a look at what you’ve become. I stopped calling people names around Grade 7. I’m not engaging with you for sport. I reached out to you when you lost your job, so you have my number.
Iain MacIntyre
@imacSportsnet
· 1h
Replying to @mattsekeres and @Sportsnet
You know Matt, you were not long ago a serious journalist. Take a look at what you’ve become. I stopped calling people names around Grade 7. I’m not engaging with you for sport. I reached out to you when you lost your job, so you have my number.
I’ve tuned out pro sports except Canuck games, getting close to being done from them to.
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Iain MacIntyre
@imacSportsnet
· 1h
Replying to @mattsekeres and @Sportsnet
You know Matt, you were not long ago a serious journalist. Take a look at what you’ve become. I stopped calling people names around Grade 7. I’m not engaging with you for sport. I reached out to you when you lost your job, so you have my number.
Iain MacIntyre
@imacSportsnet
· 1h
Replying to @mattsekeres and @Sportsnet
You know Matt, you were not long ago a serious journalist. Take a look at what you’ve become. I stopped calling people names around Grade 7. I’m not engaging with you for sport. I reached out to you when you lost your job, so you have my number.
And sure, that’s not the greatest defensive move to make there. It’s not often you want to turn your back, count to 10, then slowly turn around to see if you can find anyone on the ice. Hide and seek defence hasn’t been taught in the league since the Bill LaForge days for a reason.
The biggest story of the week heading into the game was the alleged division going on in the Canucks dressing room, which essentially has boiled down to the plotline of “Avengers: Civil War.”
Horvat on one side, Miller on the other. Green is the problem on one side, Benning is the problem on the other.
Matt Sekeres on one side, Iain MacIntyre on the other.
People picking sides and allegiances, both fighting for what they believe in.
(The idea of this team eventually having it out at YVR is a visual I am here for by the way.)
This entire situation, objectively, is kind of hilarious. Take out the ramifications of such a rift, or whether it’s true or not, and just take a moment to cast each member in this Civil War.
But as Daniel Wagner wrote Friday, losing tends to magnify everything. Or as Drance would say, it makes you feel like you walked into a Vancouver office with an Eldredge Knot.
(Edit: Drance just texted me to inform me to use a four-hand knot as that would “really improve the joke.”)
Remember when the Canucks were winning in 2011? And the biggest problem was Tanner Glass wasn’t an elite fourth-liner?
Instead of rumours of snubbed Halloween invites or potentially trading away a star player or a dressing room creating their own version of Squid Games, Pass it to Bulis simply played Scrabble with Glass instead.
But when the team is playing awful and everyone is waiting to see if someone is going to get fired, it’s real easy getting caught up trying to prove that change is necessary because everything is broken beyond repair.
Anything and everything will then get put up for debate as possible evidence of the (non-Giraffe) chaos.
Meddling owner?
Players on the team?
Bad management?
Poor coaching?
Bees?
Pick your poison, and odds are someone somewhere has hypothesized about it being the main reason for the team’s dysfunction.
Which is where we find ourselves when stories like “the rift” come up. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a true story, it just has to FEEL like it’s true for it to gain a life of its own.
The team is such a mess on the ice, it stands to reason that some will assume it’s a mess off the ice as well.
It also doesn’t matter if the team denies it because why would they ever confirm such a story?
Could you imagine Green sheepishly grinning at the podium and admitting it all?
“You got me, this team is in SHAMBLES. Miller just punched out Horvat, then Pearson tore his ACL jumping on Miller’s back, Pettersson demanded we trade away anyone not in his inner circle and poor Hughes was just sobbing in the corner, pleading for us to all get along. So to answer your question Brendan, I do think the new lineup we’re going with tonight is a fresh look, yes.”
Instead, we see things like during Friday night’s broadcast where Dan Murphy lobbed a question to Horvat about the leadership in the dressing room during an intermission interview.
Is Horvat going to admit on air that he can’t wait to lock in a Sharpshooter on Miller? Of course not.
Instead, he is going to shake his Rafael Palmeiro finger and emphatically deny everything. No team would ever confirm such a thing. Ever.
Instead, we would hear about it 20 years later when one of the players writes an autobiography with Dan Murphy to make some coin.
So what we’re left with is the truthiness of it all. People on both sides of the ledger deciding to fit the story into their narrative in the way that makes the most sense to them.
One side will claim the team is a mess and that where there is smoke there is fire, just another sign major change is needed.
The other side will claim that media and fans are making up lies and this is why players will never sign in Vancouver and that it’s not as bad as it looks.
Nothing can be proven, so feel free to choose your own adventure with this truth. Flip back to the last page anytime you end up with a result you don’t like.
Round and round we go in Vancouver, where the journey might be different but the destination is always the same. Two sides angrily yelling at each other from across the aisle, everything that comes to light being used as proof that the other side is the baddies.
And don’t get me wrong, things like this do happen on teams. The Trevor Linden and Mark Messier rift is a real thing that occurred, this stuff can happen on any team.
Even the West Coast Express era had rumours and stories of being a very “clique-y” team, it’s just they did pretty good during the regular season so it didn’t gain much traction.
We spent most of the time wondering why Darby Hendrickson was scoring big goals in the playoffs against the Canucks, so we didn’t bother digging deep into the psyche of the team.
And that’s the key to all of this. When you’re losing this badly, everything feels exponentially bigger.
When the team is this bad, everything gets laid out on the table for people to sift through.
Before you know it you’re screaming at your friend about whether Glinda the Good Witch from “The Wizard of Oz” is a princess or not.
And for the record, I don’t think there is a rift. And even if there was a rift, that’s not the main problem for me. Losing is the disease causing everything, the roster not being good enough being the main culprit.
(Somewhere Casey Printers is nodding emphatically.)
It’s the Ryan Kesler Line, basically.
On a winning team, Kesler’s attitude is the best. He’s a gamer, he’s the kind of guy you win with.
On a losing team? Kesler has a poor attitude. He’s bringing the team down. He’s not a team player.
Depending on your team’s fortune, you’re either on one side of the Kesler Line or the other.
When you win, people overstate the things you do that contributed to winning.
When you lose, people overstate the things you do that contributed to losing.
This is how find ourselves debating the merits of a story about a rift in the dressing room.
This is how we find ourselves hearing random people talking about all these “stories” they know that prove the team is in disarray.
This is how we hear about how Pettersson is sick. My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Petey pass out at 31 Flavors last night.
I guess it’s pretty serious.
The end result is we simply don’t know what’s going on in the Canucks dressing room. Only the people involved do. At best we can make educated guesses based on who heard what and who said what and maybe we’ll find ourselves in the right ballpark.
But in the end none of that matters. Because the only way for the Canucks to crawl out of any of this mess is to, quite simply, win.
Their end game to putting any drama behind them is to start winning and putting together a solid team.
How they choose to do that remains to be seen.
In the meantime, all we’re left with is the truthiness of everything.
