Entries with the tag: colorado+avalanche

Concerns About Bernier. And Everything Else.

by Alanah McGinley on 07/05/08 at 04:17 PM
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Chuqui at Two For Elbowing—who certainly knows far more about Steve Bernier’s history than I do—wrote a great post yesterday wondering about the sequence of events leading up to his trade to Vancouver:

Even recently, Bernier was being touted as a key cog in the Buffalo future.

And now he’s off to Vancouver for a 2nd and a third draft pick?

Alarm bells are going off here. When a player starts becoming the pass-around pack, unless it’s Mike Sillinger, you have to wonder why; especially when teams say nice things about them and then trade them.

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The Hockey Gods Are Ruthless

by Alanah McGinley on 03/26/08 at 04:04 PM
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Vancouver vs Calgary: a.k.a. How to Lose—With Style

First: Build a 2-Goal Lead
Make it heady and fun (2 goals in 12 seconds!). Make the Flames fans go mute. Make the Sportsnet West announcers sound so depressed you want to send them a gift basket later.  Good times!

Second: Flirt with Disaster
Get outshot 672 to 3 in the second period. Let in one goal.  It’s now 2-1—you’re just keeping it interesting!

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Ohlund Gone For Season?

by Alanah McGinley on 03/06/08 at 02:51 PM
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From TSN, dire news with a wee bit of hope:

The Vancouver Canucks received some bad news Thursday as they learned defenceman Mattias Ohlund has bone chips in his left knee.

In an attempt to reduce the swelling in the joint, Ohlund has been administered anti-inflammatory drugs.  He will then be given four to six days to see if the swelling has gone down enough to return to play.

If Ohlund has not recovered enough to play at that time he will undergo arthroscopic surgery, ending his season.

There’s no way to put a positive spin on this. And note that the injury happened in that losing game against Colorado. 

How everyone doesn’t buy my theory that the Avs are the Evil Empire, I’ll just never understand…

Pessimism & Rebirth

by Alanah McGinley on 03/04/08 at 01:19 PM
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In the last 24 hours, the hockey media has been fond of repeating the lie that Peter Forsberg was meant to be a “game time decision” tonight against the Canucks.  Whatever. Perhaps it’s sort of like when Peter Forsberg was no longer realistically considering returning to the NHL… yet somehow managed to sign with the Avs just in time to vanish into Rocky Mountain hell.

Oh, he’ll play tonight, because after losing Ryan Smyth and Marek Svatos to injury, it’s the perfect setup for Forsberg to resurrect. And I’m not even being snarky. Vancouver has a plan to roll over to this guy like Cloutier used to roll over to Joe Sakic setting personal NHL records on our net. 

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c.2003 Denver and Things Are Looking Up

by Alanah McGinley on 02/27/08 at 06:25 PM
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It was 2003 that I first crowned the Avs the Evil Empire (in my own sweetly-quaint hockey shorthand).  But things change, of course, and the truth is that hockey hasn’t been quite the same for this Canucks fan in recent years.

Scoring, blah. Shootouts, blah. Big saves? Big deal. Coach of the Year? Pffft. Sometimes it all seems like one never-ending strand of mediocrity that occasionally resembles hockey, occasionally doesn’t. I mean, the games are often great, but my anticipation factor is lower than it used to be.

But now the Colorado Avalanche have decided to change all that.  It’s 2003 all over again, and I think I’m about to be reborn.

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Art on Ice

by Alanah McGinley on 12/05/07 at 04:04 PM
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updated: two more masks added below by request

This week, the NHL packaged a collection of goalie mask photos with blurbs behind a mask belonging to at least one goalie on every team. 

Below are the two featured masks from Vancouver.  Roberto Luongo’s is obviously familiar to most Canucks fans, but I’d never noticed the details of Curtis Sanford’s mask before. So I put those up, plus Peter Budaj’s of Colorado, as well, for the “inside joke"…

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Friday Night with the Avs

by Alanah McGinley on 11/09/07 at 05:28 PM
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Vancouver vs Colorado

For a fair-and-balanced view on The Team That Even God Must Hate, I decided to get the perspective of a couple of friends:  DC, who educates the patriotic souls of America as to why they shouldn’t believe anything they see in the media; and Greg, whose day job it is to corrupt those same patriots by way of his own profession.

But each shares one embarrassing reality—they both seem comfortable believing that Avalanche fandom is not a mistake of nature, but actually some kind of positive aspect of their personalities.

So we did a fast Q & A before game time:

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Dumb and Dumber

by Alanah McGinley on 11/03/07 at 07:52 PM
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[Update: The Yankee is doing a liveblog of this game. And I might be contributing there a bit myself, since his sobriety is liable to be a bit questionable...]

Vancouver at Colorado

It’s hard to really work up a good head of insults about my least favorite team in the NHL, when my Canucks are currently flailing around like a beached whale searching for dinner. 

But while the Avs can show off their minty-clean home ice record and that Wonder Rookie of theirs tonight, I figure that at least they’re also forced to exhibit the dumber mascot.

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Northwest Division Previews

by Alanah McGinley on 10/04/07 at 02:24 PM
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Putting in my time at The Crazy Canucks over the last couple weeks, I had a chance to chat with some popular bloggers/writers covering the other NW Division this season. Here are the episodes:

• Edmonton Oilers & Calgary Flames
• Colorado Avalanche
• Minnesota Wild

To check out the individual columns and blogs of everyone who participated in the above episodes: Battle of Alberta, Jerseys and Hockey Love, Hockey Rants, Post-Pessimist Association, and John Shipley at the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

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