No real news out of Camp Canuck over the past few days, so I'll touch on a few Canuck-related items for your Sunday reading enjoyment.
Mother's Day at Madison Square Garden
The New York Rangers will be staging a poignant Mother's Day tribute when Martin St. Louis' father and sister are in the stands at MSG tonight for Game 6 of their series against Pittsburgh.
Marty showed a ton of dedication to his team by coming back to play on Friday after his mom's sudden passing on Thursday. It clearly gave the Rangers the emotional lift they needed. Not exactly straight out of page 24 of Alain Vigneault's coaching handbook, but it kept his team from being eliminated and finally injected a bit of feeling into a stunningly dull series.
Gibson Dazzles for Ducks
I laughed when I saw Twitter flipping out yesterday when John Gibson was named as starter for Anaheim in Game 4 against Los Angeles. After seeing Gibson's cucumber-cool demeanour on the ice when he shut out the Canucks in his first-ever NHL game a month ago, I was hoping he'd get to start in place of injured Frederik Andersen when he was recalled. I figured he'd do just fine.
Gibson did better than fine. He triggered Darryl Sutter into replacing Jonathan Quick with Martin Jones after the Ducks built a 2-0 lead in the first period, then calmly held down the fort the rest of the way. This kid is something very special.
I like it anytime a team can make the Kings squirm and I love a good comeback, so this development really perks up the LA/Anaheim series for me. Happy to see Minnesota making a series out of it against Chicago as well.
There is a Canuck-related offshoot here: Gibson's quick development almost certainly means that Jonas Hiller will be on the UFA market in July and could end up being a target for Vancouver.
I still think that if the Canucks pursue a goalie, they'll be more likely to go after Jaroslav Halak, but the Islanders are making a concerted effort to sign him. In case you missed it, they gave Washington
a fourth-round draft pick for the rights to negotiate with Halak before the free-agency window opens.
Consistent goaltending could make a big difference for that team. I wonder if he'd be willing to sign there?
Futa Re-Ups With L.A.
Another name from Trevor Linden's potential G.M. list decides to stay with his current team. Rather than lose Mike Futa, the Kings promoted him from director of amateur scouting to vice-president of hockey operations and director of player personnel,
according to this press release from the Kings' website.
I'm starting to think that these growing front offices are slowly evolving as a result of the salary cap. When teams can only spend so much on players and have limited options for player movement, they need to look at other ways to get an edge. When a management figure starts to show promise, it makes sense to give him more money and a better title to keep him around than to let him jet off to a rival.
I remain concerned that this trend is causing the Canucks to sweat a little as they continue their G.M. search. I'll re-visit Jim Benning and sort through the current state of Vancouver's options in Monday's blog.
World Championships
A better game for Canada on Saturday against Slovakia, where a third-period surge gave the Canadians a 4-1 win. Yeah, Cody Hodgson scored the winning goal, but Kevin Bieksa followed that up with a goal of his own, and Alex Burrows made a great play with Joel Ward on the fourth goal.
With such an inexperienced Canadian team, I think—I hope—they'll start to gel once they get over the jetlag and start adjusting to life in Minsk. Burrows and Ward look good together but I'm inclined to agree with most of the talk in the comments—the Canucks don't go in the direction they want if they look at acquiring a 33-year-old like Ward.
With 16 teams competing in two groups, the round-robin at the World Championships is much longer than we saw at the Olympics. It runs till May 20. Canada's next game is against Jaromir Jagr and the Czechs, Monday at 10:45 a.m.
As for the other Canucks: Team Denmark is 0-2 so far. Jannik Hansen is playing 18 minutes a game and has one goal, while Nicklas Jensen has one assist so far in about 12 minutes of ice time a game. Yannick Weber is pointless as Switzerland has opened the tourmanent 0-2 as well, and Joacim Eriksson's waiting for his first ice time with the Swedes, who are doing well with Anders Nilsson in net.
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