canuckleheads fan

Yeah, we're finding the same thing down here, it's spreading among the younger folks, because most of the oldsters have had their shots. I'm lucky, I work in public service, so I got mine early. My wife works in healthcare, and she just got her first jab of Moderna a couple of weeks ago. Biden is doing a great job, he's recognized that we're in a race with the variants and the stupidity of red state Republiclowns. My understanding with Canada's roll-out is much like the EU's is a lack of vaccine. That's not the government's fault. I want you guys to get your shots and open the border. My mom has Alzheimer's and I probably only have one or two good years left with her. My dad's got Parkinson's and is declining fast. I quarantined for two weeks in November to see my mom, but haven't seen my dad for over a year.

The season has got to be over. With the Canucks adding names to the list on a near daily basis, I don't see how the get the rest of the season played.

Dude, I'm NOT trolling, and Covid is NOT a hoax! I commented on an article I read that shows that ice hockey is the least safe of the sports, and that's what you got from that?

Google "elevation mask" or "training mask" when I used to go to the gym, I'd see the odd person using them on the treadmill. It limits oxygen intake to mimic training at elevation, which means that your 20-minute treadmill stint acts on the body like 30 or 40 minutes. Yes, they should have stayed in personal bubbles like my wife and I have. That would have been the safe and professional thing to do. My wife's in a small bubble at work with four co-workers who are super careful about mask wearing and distancing away from work. I'm always masked at my work for the same reason. Fortunately I've had two shots of Moderna, so I'm feeling a little more confident, but still masking when I'm out.

Don't even know who you're talking about. I live in the US, and aside from knowing that Justin Trudeau is PM, I'm isolated from Canadian politics.

Old leatherface Margie Q Greene is a complete moron, and waste of air. She's a proponent of Qanon, a conspiracy theory joke likely dreamed up by the creator 8-chan to drive internet traffic, that has now become a major organizing movement within the Republican Party. They literally believe some incredibly far-out things that you would think only people on a bad acid trip, or with serious mental health issues would believe. The sooner she's off the national stage, the better. Oh, and like so many in the Republican party, she's a family values hypocrite, espousing evangelical values at the same time she's having trysts with multiple men from her gym. It was so bad that Cross-Fit has disavowed her.

And avoid playing ice hockey. I read that of all the professional sports, ice hockey was the most likely to suffer this kind of super spreader event because of the inversion at ice level. The warm air above, holds a layer of cold air at ice-level, which means that instead of rising and dissipating, the virus instead stays concentrated at that cold level, which is right where the players are breathing hard. They should have been practicing with elevation masks, at least that might have saved a few from taking in what were likely massive viral loads.

Nobody actually knows how many cases of the Brazilian variant there are in the US since the former occupant of the White House, Orange Adolf, was so opposed to testing because he thought higher case numbers reflected badly on him. Most of the red states with Republican governors are still discouraging testing unless you have symptoms, and even then tests are not always easy to find. President Biden has been totally focused on vaccinations knowing we are in a race with the variants, so we are past testing and tracing and more concerned with vaccinations and mitigation like masking and distancing. Also someone mentioned IVs, the early infection treatment for Covid, the monoclonal antibodies, are administered through IV and have proven highly successful at knocking down the symptoms and keeping people out of the ICU. They are also far more readily available than most people realize. Hopefully all the Canucks family are getting them.

I think the fact that we didn't have a flu season was because of the masking and distancing measures taken to avoid Covid as much as anything.

That does not look like a professional athlete's body. That doesn't even resemble the bodies of most college males I've known. Fortunately the Canucks have a great player development program and terrific fitness coaches.

Honestly, this topic is stupid. I'm not the biggest QH fan, but I do think he's an exciting offensive player who's still figuring out what he can and cannot get away with, when to take a risk and when to play it safe, but hand wringing because his +/- sucks in his second year in the league is just plain stupid. We all know that it takes longer to develop a well-rounded NHL Defenseman than it does any other position. NHL defensemen don't usually reach their peak until their late 20's. It takes longer for offensive minded defenders to absorb the defensive side of the game at this level, and become a 200 foot threat. The more limited stay-at-home guys are one-dimensional and as such, only get to the NHL if they can defend. The trope about his size is also silly. Yes, QH is small for the league and especially for his position, but guess what, other small players have found success in the league and playing D. QH is likely not yet fully grown height-wise and certainly not girth wise. He won't have a fully mature man's body until he hits his mid-20s, so he can obviously put on another ten to twenty pounds with the proper diet and weight regimen. Will he be able to push a lug like Perry out of the crease? No, but then not many defensemen have had a lot of luck doing that during his career. As I watch today's game, there is a lot less of defensemen pushing (interference) guys out of the crease and a lot more positional play, and stick checking going on in front of the net. The key is going to be who the RHD is playing with QH, as they will have to work as a unit to overcome each other's limitations. In today's less physical NHL, QH is just fine size wise. I do fear for his durability over the course of a long season and playoff run and career longevity due to that lack of size. I notice that big teams like Montreal have decided the way to counter him is to get in his face and hit him at every turn, the Canucks need a player who is willing to rattle the cages of the stars on the other team as a way to lower the temperature on Quinn. But I have also noticed the QH has learned from this extra attention and moves the puck quicker against teams who have decided to make him their focus. Is QH the next Bobby Orr? No, I don't think he'll ever be a great defender, and will always be somewhat limited by his lack size, but he WILL be better defensively than he is now, and eventually he will be an excellent +/- player. For you hand-wringers, I point to Bo Horvat as an example. You all recall all the gnashing of teeth on this board when Bo, in his second full season as a professional, was -30? He's turned out to be our best counter-center, a second-line center who can match up in a shutdown role against the best offensive centers in the league and yet still produce offense of his own. Give the kid a chance to develop before you decide that he's some sort of failure. Jake on the other hand...

You're looking at it backward. It's not how much you blow out the top and bottom of the mask, but how much you suck in when you take a breath. If you mask fits property, you are drawing your air through the mask, thus filtering out vapor particles that carry the virus. Besides that, breath going up and down, is a lot better than breath directly in your face. There are plenty of studies that show that masking has saved millions of lives. Why did Asia have an easier time with Covid than the US? Because they've been through the previous Sars epidemic and immediately masked up. Here's a CDC study of Kansas after their governor implimented a mask mandate that some counties opted out of: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947e2.htm. Counties that masked saw a decrease, those that did not saw a 100% increase of Covid. Look at the US if you need another example, when the country was for the most part masking, cases were going down, after FL, TX, etc. rescinded their mask orders, our case numbers are rising again. A mask can even help you to get less sick if you get Covid because you take in lower viral load. I saw an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that compared pre-mask and post mask America. Post mask, not only were fewer people getting infected, but those that caught it suffered milder symptoms and fewer deaths. Why? Because even if your mask doesn't stop ALL the virus, it stops a lot more than if you weren't masked. The symptoms of Covid brought on by a low viral load tend be not as acute and overall it's lot less deadly.

But Tinder is not

Science disagrees with you.

Far more reasons to keep him, based on his drafting alone. Not only did he get Petey, Brock, Huggy, Hogs and Demko at well below what has turned out to be their market value, but we've yet to see how the addition of Pods and Olli full-time will impact the team. Plus, he made the trades for Schmidt and Miller, both of which will yield long-term benefits at a fraction of the going rate. This team will hit its stride in the next year or two as Petey and Huggy develop into all-purpose superstars. Thanks to several years of win-now management and horrible drafting by Gillis, JB has also had to re-stock the farm system. It's been almost a decade since the Canucks' AHL affiliate provided quality 3rd and 4th line players the way established winners do. You'll recall that the 2010-11 Canucks had Burrows, Bieksa, Hansen, Kesler, Raymond Rypien, Tanev, Schneider, Hodgson, and Edler all of whom spent half a season or more in Manitoba before making the big club. We have yet to see that kind of pipeline established with Utica, but it's coming. We are a year or so away from Utica regularly providing home-grown bottom six talent which is far less expensive than having to sign that talent as UFAs. So far on the current roster of regulars (Olli doesn't count as a regular yet), only Demko, Jake, and Big Mac have spent significant time in Utica.

I would imagine that when we were really horrible and very young, it was hard to get quality UFAs to sign in Vancouver, and the UFAs JB could attract had to be paid more because they'd have no shot at the cup and Vancouver is a high-tax venue. The bottom six UFAs and players that JB brought in were all high quality teammates and strong defensive players, Motte, Sutter, Beags, even Rooster, and that was by design to provide veteran leadership and balance the offensive prowess of the top six, giving the team a better chance to win by having the bottom six guys take a higher percentage of defensive zone starts to take pressure off the young guys. So, as the Canucks improve, as the youngsters smoothe off the rough edges, my guess is that JB will find higher quality UFAs, like Thornton and Spezza, who are willing to take bargain basement type deals and play third and fourth line roles in exchange for a shot at the cup. You'll notice that as the team improved, and JB recognized that Petey needed a big, physical player on his line, he pulled the trigger on his best trade so far in his tenure, getting under-used JT Miller in what I think is a real steal. The plan as we move forward is to continue to add to and build around the core, fill the minor league system with quality prospects who will play a role one day, sign UFAs to fill in the gaps and hope they turn out to be a good fit.

I still think they sign him to two years at a 6th Dman rate and expose him in the ED. I think Benn will do that gladly. Whether he plays in Seattle or Vancouver, he is closer to Victoria than he would be in any other NHL city. He is at the stage of his career where on a decent team he'll spend more time in the pressbox than on the ice, but in Vancouver he can still be a solid #7 and slide in if there are injuries. In Seattle he has a chance to compete for a 5-6 spot and be that veteran leadership that young teams need to gel.

Or maybe it's his ability to evaluate talent and draft? Petey, QH, Brock, Hogs, and Demko are all steals where they were chosen. I'm sure we're all looking forward to the arrival of Pods to see if he's as good advertised. Acquiring Pearson and Schmidt were great moves. And now we can see when those overpriced bottom six guys miss games because of injury, the team struggles mightily. Maybe they're not so overpriced after all.

I know they have to expose him, what I'm saying is that if OJ was playing every game, and playing as well as we saw earlier this year, the Canucks would have had to protect him. By not playing him, he becomes a massive risk for Seattle to take, a third year pro who has missed more games to injury than he has played and has only played a handful of NHL games. Either Jake, Gauds or Holtby is a better prospect. So by not playing him, they don't have to protect him because it's highly unlikely Seattle takes him.

Lol, that was honestly a spell check error, I'm sure my spelling was closer to Slovakia than it was to taking your time, so I'll blame it on Grammerly. Had I actually proofed the post I might have even caught it.

I thinking that maybe rather than protecting him in the ED, they're hiding him by not playing him.

It becomes a game of patince because the neutral zone trap is intended to cause turnovers and odd-man rushes. The Canucks need to be responsible, simplify their defensive game, skate the puck out, get the puck deep and win puck battles. If the Canucks play that solid five-man defensive game, they can win a low-scoring contest. If they lose patience and blow the zone, they will lose.

Fair point, it will be interesting to see if JB can pull off a trade.

But who do they expose? If Benn is gone, then they have to expose either Schmidt or Myers. They have to expose at least one Dman who is under contract next year and has played at least 27 games this season or 54 games between last season and this season. Of course Eddie is a UFA an Huggy is exempt. If they don't sign and expose Benn, then they have to expose Myers or Schmidt.

I fully agree, Gauds play of late has given him the edge in my eyes. Jake had that one great game a week or so ago, and then regressed to his lazy, circle skating self. Last night he looked good at times, but he loses way too many board battles for a big guy.