Cheers and Jeers – Feb 10th

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 throw a glove in the air to celebrate KB3 and the Canucks callups this week, while Timmy T and Ronny Mac need to learn to shut the hell up.

JEERS to Jeremy Roenick for even entertaining the notion of being involved in the purchase of the Phoenix Coyotes. First of all, the idea of keeping that team in Phoenix is incredibly toxic, to put it lightly. It’s just bad. Get that team the hell out of there as fast as possible – whether it’s Quebec City or Seattle or southern Ontario. Besides that, the ownership and financial situation in Glendale is even WORSE than toxic. They’re drowning in debt and that team will never make a dime. In fact, an NHL team in Phoenix will do nothing but lose tens of millions every year (an amount that will be subsidized by Canadian hockey consumers). Roenick has proven over the years that he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. But this has got to be the dumbest idea that anyone in hockey has EVER had. This is dumb, even by JR standards. JR – do yourself a favour, and do not do anything more with this idea. Don’t explore it further, don’t discuss it with a lawyer, don’t talk about it publicly, don’t even think about it. Just DON’T.

CHEERS to Byron Bitz and Mike Duco for making the most out of their call-up assignments with the Vancouver Canucks this week. Bitz has now reached folk-legend status in Vancouver, with his 3 points (1G 2A) in 3 games, while Duco earned a whole lot of new fans with his tenacious, relentless play on Thursday. Duco finished last night with a +1, 3 hits and 11:16 of TOI. Not bad for our favourite vampire. Not bad at all.

JEERS to Tim Thomas for ONCE AGAIN making himself a spectacle in a political debate, despite his insistence that he should be left alone. Timmy again took to Facebook to rant about the persecution of Catholics in America, yet insists that those are his personal feelings and he won’t talk about them. Tim – let’s set something straight here. They’re not private personal views WHEN ANYONE WITH A BROWSER AND AN INTERNET CONNECTION CAN SEE WHAT YOU’RE WRITING. If these are really your private and personal thoughts and you don’t want to be asked about them, then STOP POSTING THEM ON F***KING FACEBOOK, DUMMY!! And for Christ’s sake, if it’s that personal, make your profile PRIVATE! He made it about himself when he skipped out on the White House ceremony and he’s doing it again. He is digging himself a large hole, out of which I personally doubt he’ll be able to climb. Man, Roberto Luongo must be thrilled about this. Is anyone even talking about Lu anymore? No? EXACTLY.

Well, SPEAKING of Lu… (see what I did there?)

CHEERS to Luongo and Miikka Kiprusoff for their ridiculous saves this week. Both are surely going to be finalists for Save of The Year. Luongo’s vertical kick save and Kiprusoff’s "scorpion" save were easily the hockey highlights of the week and both happened on the same night. In fact, our friends at Pass It To Bulis wrote a whole post on Luongo’s save. Here is the clip of Kiprusoff and his amazing save, rightfully dubbed by Mike Johnson as a scorpion save. Just awesome.

JEERS to Ron MacLean for once again reminded all of Vancouver and beyond that he was a referree for over 20 years. While talking with Scott Rintoul and Paul Chapman this morning on TEAM 1040, the inevitable questions about Burrows, Auger and his incessant comments were asked. Ronny Mac tried in vain to offer an olive branch and a half-hearted apology. We get it. And we get that you are going to defend the bejeezus out of your reffing brethren. And while I find it admirable that Mclean is willing to talk to the TEAM 1040 about this subject, he continues to do himself no favours by offering up rambling, incoherent answers to these questions, all the while reminding Rintoul, Chapman and TEAM 1040 listeners that he wa a referree for over 20 years.

MacLean even had the audacity to call out the league, when the league made a point of identifying a wholly egregious error made by Don Van Massenhoven and Tim Peel in Anaheim’s OT win over Carolina on Wednesday night. Corey Perry blatantly tripped a Carolina defender, retrieved the puck and scored the OT winner. Neither Peel (who is renowned for being one of the worst referees that the NHL employs) nor Van Massenhoven blew the play down to call a penalty, and Perry’s goal stood up as the game winner. The NHL immediately called out the two refs for missing the blatant foul, issuing a warning that that type of incompetence won’t be tolerated. And MacLean DEFENDED the refs!!! Jesus, Ron, I know that you’ve got the stripes tattoo and you were branded with a flaming whistle, but you can let SOME things go! You can’t ALWAYS defend NHL referees. You can’t! Some times refs, like the rest of us, make indefensible mistakes. The end of the Anaheim game was a perfect example. That was indefensible. They blew it, Ron. And so did you.

Finally…

CHEERS to Kevin Bieksa for continuing to be the most quotable Canuck, probably in the history of the team. During the waning moments of last night’s decisive win over the Minnesota Wild, Bieksa threw his glove at Wild F Cal Clutterbuck. After the game, he was asked about the incident and said, "During my release I wondered if it was a good thing then after my release I knew it was a good thing." Oh, and then of course there is Bieksa’s game-saving sequence at the end of the Canucks/Avs game Saturday. Dives to save a goal, takes another pass of a stanchion and ties the game with 34 seconds left. You know… no big whoop.

If I could end every week with a legit CHEERS to Kevin Bieksa… I’d be a happy dude.