Cheers and Jeers – Vol. 1

The Good and the Bad of this past week.

Summertime and the living’s easy.

Plus I’m looking for things about which to write. So I’m starting a weekly feature. Cheers and Jeers for the week that was in Canuck Nation.

CHEERS to Henrik and Daniel Sedin for being honoured in their native Sweden. Their wonderful season full of accolades continues as their homeland honours them for their work both on and off the ice. Read all about it here.

JEERS to Norton Sports for the absurdity around the Lee Sweatt signing. Ok, we get that the Canucks didn’t qualify him. That happens. Let’s remember that Sweatt was about 11th on the depth chart for the Canucks last year, and only played because of comical number of injuries to the Canucks blue line corps. As Sweatt got close to signing, Norton Sports tried to create mystery and interest around their client with a series of slightly cryptic tweets. Here, here, and here… until finally announcing that Sweatt had signed with Ottawa. Honestly guys… nobody except for Lee and his brother Billy care that much about where Lee signed. So I have no idea why you felt the need to create this mystery around his signing.

CHEERS to (god, I cannot BELIEVE I am about to say this) the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Tampa Bay Lightning for actively promoting the fact that their players are on Twitter. Both the Leafs and the Lightning have links from the main menu of their web sites listing all their players and staff that are on Twitter and encourage their fans to interact. I’m sure that there are other NHL clubs doing it, but in the last week, both these teams have made a point of taking to Twitter to promote this fact.

which leads me to…

JEERS to the Vancouver Canucks for seemingly limiting their players and staff on the social media airwaves. So far, only Kesler and Lapierre are on Twitter, and both their timelines are as dull as it gets. We know that both Kesler and Lapierre have great senses of humour and aren’t showing it all on Twitter. Then there’s the Mike Duco saga. Duco, a fun presence on Twitter, closed his Twitter account almost immediately after joining the Canucks, likely thanks to the no-fun Canucks PR and Mgmt staff.

which leads me to…

CHEERS to Mike Duco for issuing a final statement on Twitter and owning his tweets. Although this was totally unnecessary. His tweets were written when he was a FLORIDA PANTHER. He was an OPPOSING player and one that only played 12 NHL games. Did he have a reasonable expectation of being traded and playing with the Vancouver Canucks?! NO! And his chirps were on the mark too, calling out Luongo and the Sedins. So who cares? A bit of fun and some chirping amongst hockey players. Why stifle this? Anyway… good on Duco for taking the high road. (I can’t link his messages in here, but his account is closed now. Sorry.)

which leads me to…

JEERS to PASS IT TO BULIS for getting Mike Duco banned and shut down from Twitter! It’s ALL THEIR FAULT!

Ok. I kid, I kid…. It has nothing to do with them. But it’s fun to join in the finger pointing. Our boys at PiTB posted the infamous blog which did nothing but highlight and collate Duco’s tweets. All they did was spend 30 minutes using their Google machine, WordPress and a cup of coffee to get it all down.

So in fact.. this JEERS is to ANYONE who is blaming our friends at PiTB for getting Mike Duco shut down from Twitter.

However, there is one person who is exempt from that last jeer. And that is…

CHEERS to Anthony Stewart for his riotous "assault" on Pass it To Bulis this morning on his Twitter account. Just spend 10 minutes reading his tweets today and have a hearty laugh.