Recap: 12/15/2006 Canucks vs Predators

Friday night, the Canucks met the Predators and managed to pull off yet another victory. The game-play wasn’t really something to write home about, but the referees managed to keep it interesting. With two players ejected late in the game due to minor slashing infractions, the Canucks were a little confused about whether or not the refs were aware of the rules. Rule #1 of the CHRL Referee’s Guide states that “All games are to be governed by C.H.A. Rules and Regulations.” I’m not sure when the last time two guys were ejected from a CHA game for slashing. In fact I’m pretty sure that slashing is a 2 minute minor. But alas, with all this ref-bashing I’m starting to sound like an Oiler… At least we’ve managed to pull off 9 victories now.

The game started out as usual for the Canucks. Slow and sluggish out of the gate, we let them score a goal or two before we managed to start playing some hockey. Newly acquired backup goaltender Mike let in a couple softies early. Sorry Mike – we won’t be calling you up again ;) - Just kidding. Thanks for shutting the door for the rest of the game. Maybe we’ll try giving you a bit of defense next time instead of just assuming that no other teams in the league could possibly score on us. We eventually woke up and managed to blow a couple goals past the Predators keeper. Our strategy of knocking their goalie in the head with a slap shot seemed to work. Mike ended up executing the above strategy for us en-route to scoring two nice goals. Joel also managed to pot two, and John rounded out the scoring with a nice shot from the slot.

The Canucks go into the Christmas break with a 9 and 1 record. Not too shabby. We just got to step it up a bit next January when we play the only team that has managed to score more than two goals against us. We are more than capable of handing them three consecutive losses, so let’s do it. Hopefully we’ll get together for a practice before the next game to work on our head-shots – and maybe some skating and passing too. By the looks of things we should probably practice our penalty-kill as well. I’ll try arrange something in the next week or two, so keep checking out the site.

To all Canucks and Canucks fans – Happy Holidays! To everyone else: we hope you have happy holidays too - but not quite as happy :)