There’s Still a Looooong Way To Go - NOV.08.07
Entry posted by Sunny Dhillon
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<table><td><img src="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/09/sunny_blog.jpg" align="left" hspace="4">It’s only fitting that the next game for the slumping Vancouver Canucks comes against the much-hated Calgary Flames.
After all, these Canucks are the Calgary Flames.
Now quit vomiting for a second and hear me out.
This Vancouver team is built around tremendous goaltending, strong defense, and has a great deal of difficulty putting the puck in the net.
Sound familiar? It should. The 07-08 Vancouver Canucks mirror the Calgary Flames of years past.
Those Flames teams also shared one other trait with these Canucks: they were notoriously slow starters.
In Miikka Kiprusoff’s first year with Calgary, the Flames were just one game over .500 through the first two months of the season before a red-hot December righted the ship.
The next season, Calgary was 4-7-2 through October and fans were panicking that the decision to trade the tractors for season tickets was a mistake. But the Flames found their game in November, winning 10 of 13 contests. <a href="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/oct0607_flames02_b.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/oct0607_flames02_t.jpg" align="right" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="1"></a>
Even the 06-07 Flames struggled out of the gate, opening with a 3-6-1 record. It’s worth noting, however, that that Flames team had a different makeup and more offensive mindset than seasons past, with Alex Tanguay, Kristian Huselius, and Daymond Langkow each now capable of providing legitimate scoring depth.
Regardless, the point is that these similarly built Calgary teams struggled out of the gate just as much as Vancouver has this season. Yet for each of the years mentioned, the Flames made the playoffs. In one, they claimed a division title. In another, they went all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.
What then to make of all the doomsday warnings circulating around Vancouver less than a quarter of the way into the season?
Absolutely nothing.
While every team wants to get off to a good start, it’s not necessarily required to play great hockey in October to guarantee a playoff berth. Teams that are accustomed to playing tight-checking, one-goal games have the uncanny ability to string together long winning streaks that make up ground on other clubs.
Take Calgary, for instance.
In each of the last three seasons, the Flames were able to work around a tough start by putting together months in which they regularly won 8, 9, or even 10 games.<a href="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/09/09192007_flames06_b.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/09/09192007_flames06_t.jpg" align="left" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="1"></a>
Can’t Vancouver do the same thing?
Well actually, they already did.
Last season, the Canucks were under .500 as late as Christmas. But then Santa, or Mr. Hanky, depending on your belief system, brought Canucks fans an extra special present: a team that learned how to play together and won 8, 8, and 11 games in the following three months, respectively.
That team didn’t essentially turn it around until January. Yet here we are in early November and the panic across the city seems much more severe.
So while it’s tempting to put on a Chicken Little mask and run around claiming the sky is falling, it’s not necessary. And while you might be convinced that drafting Anze Kopitar would have the Canucks 14-0-0 right now, it ultimately doesn’t matter a great deal.
There’s still a lot of hockey left to be played.
There’s still a lot of time for Vancouver to find its game.
We’ve seen it before.
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