Cheers and Jeers – Dec 16

The Good and the Bad of this past week.

It’s Friday. So we close out the "Week That Was" with our latest volume of Cheers and Jeers.

This week, I praise AND cut down a member of the Chicago Blackhawks, show some love to a good BC kid and a Russian bizzaronaut, and bodyslam the G Man and Mr Poopy.

JEERS to Dave Bolland for chickening out and recanting his Sedin bashing, resorting instead to a cliched "utmost respect, blah blah blah…". Listen, ratface, your chirping was childish and played out, but AT LEAST it showed that you hate the Canucks and the Sedins. Fair enough. We like that. But don’t chicken out and take it back! CAMAN! If you’re gonna chirp, then chirp, and chirp BETTER. Booooooo!

CHEERS to Patrick Kane (yes, I am giving some shap to a Blackhawk. I know, I know…) for his flat-out ridiculous shootout move on Nicklas Backstrom. Ol’ 20 Cent made the best goalie in the league right now look like a third-string beer leaguer.

JEERS to Tony Gallagher for his article today slamming the opening episode of "24/7 The Road to the Winter Classic", saying that there was no "Boudreau-like clown". I honestly believe that Gallagher didn’t watch the show. If he had, or if he was dialed into what people are talking about, he would know that Ilya Bryzgalov is going to be the star of that show. Like, a HUMANGAS BIG star.

CHEERS to Ilya Bryzgalov for being straight-up awesome. His appearance on 24/7 is rightfully drawing up smiles and fascination from hockey fans and more for his quirky, eccentric and awesomely mindblowing stories. We want more. We want a spin-off. We want a dedicated UStream channel. If you haven’t watched it it, marvel at it here.

JEERS to the poop glove guy. Normally, I would think this is actually pretty hilarious, because I have the mentality of an 8-year-old (poop… heehehehehe… funny) but because he’s from Boston, I’ll just wildly awesome he’s a Bruins fans, and therefore a complete tool. Zung Nguyen is the pooping player – here’s his player profile. You can read about the story behind the incident here. It really was a gross and stupid act of retaliation. He was rightfully kicked out of the league and loses his $1,500 registration fees.

CHEERS to Scott Niedermayer on his wonderful career and will be bestowed one of the ultimate honours in sport. He’ll have his number 27 retired by the New Jersey Devils tonight, capping off a career that saw Niedermayer becoming arguably the winningest hockey player in history.

JEERS to the hatred toward Mark Messier from Canucks fans. I don’t really understand it. He was overpaid and failed here. Ok. So what! There have been plenty of players who have failed and there have been many overpaid players in Canucks history. Is it because he wore #11 when it was understood that the number was "retired" in honour of Wayne Maki? Well the Canucks could have told him to pick another number. Was it because it ultimately led to Trevor Linden being traded? Blame Mike Keenan. Was it because his previous team, the New York Rangers, had beat the Canucks in the Stanley Cup Final just 4 years earlier? Dude was a machine in 1994. Was it because he cheapshotted Linden in Game 6? Trevor got over it. Honestly folks, you should just feel the way I feel about Mark Messier – total apathy. I really don’t care. In fact, I barely even associate Messier as a Canuck. He was an Oiler then a Ranger, then I forget about him.

CHEERS to MARDA MILLER! The lovely Ms. Miller (known in the Twitterverse as @BurrowsGirl) is the latest fantastic writer to join the CanucksArmy ranks and we couldn’t be happier to have her on board. Check out her articles here!