Saturday, November 29, 2003
FLAMES 4, CANUCKS 4 (OT)
The Comcast cable at my parents' house is stupid. You see, "basic" cable is about thirty channels as opposed to the 60+ I have back at campus. The really stupid thing is what is considered "basic" here in B-town. They get Fox Sports NW, so they don't get screwed out of Mariners games. Get this, though -- they get The Golf Channel, ESPN IS FUZZY (black/white) AND INAUDIBLE, and THERE'S NO ESPN2. This ticks me off every frigging time I come over here. It's weird too. Other than the horribly anomalous Golf Channel, there's also Univision (it does the job sometimes, but it's no ESPN) in addition to every televangelist channel and every home shopping network you could possibly think of INSTEAD OF ESPN. Luckily, the CBC is channel 29 here, so it's not fuzzy and it's completely audible. So for the first time this year, I actually got to watch the Vancouver Canucks play hockey. Results were mixed.
To be honest with you, the Canucks should have had this game sealed. There's no way this should have ended in a tie. They had two-goal leads twice at 2-0 and 3-1. They blew the 3-1 lead and got down 4-3, which is inexcusable. Did I mention Dan Cloutier has this morbid tendency to give up his goals in twos? Well, he did that again tonight. The second and third Calgary goals in the second period were a mere 40 seconds apart. I hate when he does that.
Then on the power play in the 3rd period, Stephane Yelle put the Flames up 4-3 when Dan Cloutier overplayed the pass and left a wide-open net on his glove side. Luckily, the Canucks have a weapon (and a big huge dude) by the name of Todd Bertuzzi, and when they can park him in front of the net, good things happen. All that happened on the play was that Bert parked himself in front of the net, a couple of the Flames guys were running into him, and Brendan Morrison was able to put one through on Flame goalie Jamie McLennan.
But still, McLennan was having some knee trouble when the game was 3-1 Canucks, and that seemed to be high time for the Canucks to put this one away, which they couldn't. At later stages in the game, they seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping control of the puck, and that seemed to lead to less chances, etc. In OT, they got hit with a horribly inopportune too-many-men penalty, which they killed off, followed by a high-stick, which was weathered nine seconds later when Jarome Iginla bowled over Dan Cloutier.
Scoring goals tonight for the Canucks: Brendan Morrison three times (11, his first NHL hat trick), and Ryan Kesler (first NHL goal)
top line...
Naslund (3 A)/Morrison (3 G)/Bertuzzi (2 A) = 8 pts
Lastly, there was a nice scrum at 12:36 of the second period when everyone and their mother got into the fray and six penalties were doled out.
The Canucks get a well-deserved extended break as they face the Flames at the Garage Thursday. They had played 25 games in 50 days.
To be honest with you, the Canucks should have had this game sealed. There's no way this should have ended in a tie. They had two-goal leads twice at 2-0 and 3-1. They blew the 3-1 lead and got down 4-3, which is inexcusable. Did I mention Dan Cloutier has this morbid tendency to give up his goals in twos? Well, he did that again tonight. The second and third Calgary goals in the second period were a mere 40 seconds apart. I hate when he does that.
Then on the power play in the 3rd period, Stephane Yelle put the Flames up 4-3 when Dan Cloutier overplayed the pass and left a wide-open net on his glove side. Luckily, the Canucks have a weapon (and a big huge dude) by the name of Todd Bertuzzi, and when they can park him in front of the net, good things happen. All that happened on the play was that Bert parked himself in front of the net, a couple of the Flames guys were running into him, and Brendan Morrison was able to put one through on Flame goalie Jamie McLennan.
But still, McLennan was having some knee trouble when the game was 3-1 Canucks, and that seemed to be high time for the Canucks to put this one away, which they couldn't. At later stages in the game, they seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping control of the puck, and that seemed to lead to less chances, etc. In OT, they got hit with a horribly inopportune too-many-men penalty, which they killed off, followed by a high-stick, which was weathered nine seconds later when Jarome Iginla bowled over Dan Cloutier.
Scoring goals tonight for the Canucks: Brendan Morrison three times (11, his first NHL hat trick), and Ryan Kesler (first NHL goal)
top line...
Naslund (3 A)/Morrison (3 G)/Bertuzzi (2 A) = 8 pts
Lastly, there was a nice scrum at 12:36 of the second period when everyone and their mother got into the fray and six penalties were doled out.
The Canucks get a well-deserved extended break as they face the Flames at the Garage Thursday. They had played 25 games in 50 days.
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