Cheers and Jeers: January 10th

I keep hoping that at some point the opening monologue (soliloquy?) to this weekly hit doesn’t have to touch on mounting losses and injuries that make each passing day more challenging than the last for your Vancouver Canucks.

It just gets tiresome having to relay bad news week after week (day after day, even), you know?

Here we are though and since we last met the Canucks have lost another two games, and in fairly convincing fashion at that. Oh, and Chris Tanev is back on the shelf. It’s like groundhog day, I tells yeah.

Well, let’s get to it, why don’t we?

Cheers to Ben Hutton for returning to the Canucks lineup and making his presence felt. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m any more or less fond of Hutton’s game after he knocked Brooks Orpik on his ass and fought Devante Smith-Pelly for the trouble, but I get the sense the coach is. That matters because it’s Canucks head coach Travis Green that Hutton has to win over.

If you read The Province’s Jason Botchford’s The Provies after last night’s Canucks loss, you’d notice that in one of Green’s patented pep-talks to Hutton, he highlighted the need for Hutton to step up physically for the Canucks. Hutton’s delivered. I just hope it’s enough to keep him in the lineup when everyone’s healthy. I’m not sure I have much of an appetite for any more Hutton healthy scratches.

Jeers to the Canucks for passing up the opportunity to acquire Anthony Duclair. Look, I know the comments section is already gearing up to give me a hard time for this one on the premise that we don’t know what the Canucks did or didn’t offer for Duclair, and there’s some merit to that. But when I see a young player with offensive upside that’s already about a 40 point per 82 game season scorer with a neutral two-way profile going for Richard Panik, well, I can’t help but feel like the Canucks missed a golden opportunity to acquire a good young player for pennies on the dollar.

Cheers to Brock Boeser for his first NHL All-Star appearance on the Pacific Division team. Boeser made his selection an easy one for fans and the league alike. He’s a rising star in today’s NHL and well on his way to a Calder Trophy. This couldn’t happen to a better guy, too.

Jeers to Loui Eriksson’s disappearing act when the Canucks needed him most. Since December 1st, Eriksson has two points, both assists. This is a player making $6-million a season. The worst part of this is it really seemed like Eriksson had started getting the bounces in November — there were signs that he was turning his Canucks tenure around! Since then, Eriksson’s been invisible at best.

Cheers to Kole Lind, who’s done nothing but score since Team Canada cut him from their World Junior roster. With an assist tonight for the Kelowna Rockets, Lind has a ten-game point streak going, in which he’s scored eight goals and eleven assists. It seems he’s used that snub as motivation and the rest of the WHL is suffering for it.