I guess what I mean is I was prepared to despise them less. Largely due to the fact that Nonis ejected the 3 scumbags that drew the majority of my contempt: Jovo, Bertuzzi and Ruutu.
Jovo because, well...I think he's an asshole. He cheated as much as possible during the 03/04 series between the Flames and Canucks and then managed to whine childishly after their game 7 defeat. Something to the effect of:
"They won it on a horseshit call."
This after the refs missed blowing the play dead when a sweater was thrown onto the ice in the final minute of the game AND after Morrison slashed the stick out of Iginla's hands during the ensuing backcheck. Which of course resulted in Matt Cooke's tying goal. Not to mention the fact that Jovo purposely pushed Kiprusoff over during a Canuck powerplay in an earleir game, paving the way for a Naslund goal (and a Canuck victory). This guy had the gall to point a finger at the officials. As if complaining about the reffing after a loss wasn't poor enough.
Then there's that cheap punk Ruutu. Hammers tiny guys like Ritchie during preseason games, trips and goads everyone else and yet runs and turtles at every opportunity.
The inclusion of Bertuzzi is self-explanatory.
So with the expulsion of the above corruption I supposed I could go back to merely disliking Vancouver in the typical obligatory fashion...Until recently.
You see, Vancouver is mired in a losing streak. And with the losing has come the foot-stomping and the sniveling: not by a fringe player or green rookie either. By their supposed captain:
''After Iginla's goal, we had a lot of chances to get that third one but they ended up tying it up on, in my mind, a really flukey goal.''says Naslund after the recent loss to the Flames. That's right. Calgary's tic-tac-toe passing play that culminated in Warrener's tying goal was flukey. Somehow. I guess maybe he was confusing it with Salo's double-deflection-off-two-players PP marker.
Not that it ended there. Here's what Naslund had to say after the 3-2 stinger against Red Wings last night:
"I thought (Bulis' penalty) was a borderline call and that could have turned the game around [...]we don't get the breaks right now."Boo-hoo-hoo. I guess scoring goals without tripping the opposing goalie is probably where you should start focusing your energy there Nazzy.
This is what passes for a Captain on the West Coast? No wonder these guys missed the play-offs last year. And probably will this year. As intangible and amorphous as qualities like "leadership" and "character" may be, one can soundly say Marcus Naslund possesses only negligible amounts of either of them. What a loser.
Sorry Vancouver. You're back on "the list".
