<table width=90% align=center border=0><tr><td><img src=http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/09/henderson_headshot.jpg align=left hspace=4>With apologies to the late, great Vincent Price:

Darkness falls across the land

The midnight hour is close at hand

The foulest stench is in the air

The funk of forty lousy years

Zombie-Sedins play five-on-five

The fans hopes barely stay alive

The Northwest Chumps, the skating dead

Each home game fills the crowd with dread

The year’s a bust, the corpse stone cold

(The season’s only 12 games old!!)

We’re hanging on, we’re watching filler

Until we finally get a thriller

<a href=http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/102607_caps01_b.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/102607_caps01_t.jpg border=0 align=right vspace=1 hspace=4></a>

Well, the end of the Washington game was pretty exciting. Heart-stopping actually, watching Ovechkin buzz around the net. But the happy result was good for what ailed us.

It’s Halloween. Maybe we need a supernatural solution. If we can’t buy or draft a top six forward, perhaps we could build one in the lab. Where is Coach Frankenstein when we need him?

If we cobbled together the finer parts of a few players, we might just have something: Brad Isbister’s size, Ryan Shannon’s speed, Alex Burrow’s feisty puck pursuit – all stitched together in one monstrous package. Or maybe the neck bolts just need to be tightened on a few of our existing players.

It would be nice find someone who could win the occasional draw (I was going to insert the old joke about having to trade for a leper who could win in the face-off circle, but that would be tacky, as well as both politically and medically incorrect).

I don’t know what it is – but the Canucks have too often been cursed in this regard over their history. But if the lads hope to maintain control of the play more, they are going to have to figure out how to succeed from the drop of the puck.

<a href=http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/oct2807_redwings05_b.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://cdn.nhl.com/canucks/images/upload/2007/10/oct2807_redwings05_t.jpg border=0 align=left vspace=1 hspace=4></a>

In these dark days of fall, it’s hard for the loyal fan to decide whether to dress up as Pollyanna or Cassandra but, for now anyways, I’m going to stay of the sunny side. I still think we are closer to team success than abject team failure.

For the ghouls who suggest that our captain is merely a ghost of his former self, I’d like to whisper the names of Mike Weir or Dave Dickenson. Never disregard the determination of smallish greats supposedly past their glory – they have the hearts of lions, otherwise they wouldn’t have succeeded in the first place. And all previous history points to the Sedins being able to take the next necessary step.

I still say they would have developed faster if we had just spent the money to bring in a skilled veteran to guide them, back in the day. Never mind - I think they’ll get there, just the same.

So here’s hoping all spookiness is banished for the start of November that our beloved Orcas gnash Gnashville, and the good ship Canuck is steered away from the dark shoals of disaster, with self doubt and mental errors forced to walk the plank.

Otherwise it will be tears and too much stale candy for me.

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