Evening Headshots: March 27th

Awesome Vancouver Canucks Game of Thrones House Cigil per HabsLaughs.

Today at your friendly neighbourhood Canucks blog we recapped Tuesday night’s tedious Canucks shootout victory over Columbus, suspended our disbelief regarding the NHL’s arbitrary supplemental discipline apparatus, kicked off our trade deadline preview series with a thorough inventory of where the Canucks, what they need and what trade chips they have to play with and continued with our Bold Moves series with a look back at the David Booth purchase.

Read past the jump for the new goalie controversy, tales of boredom and Canucks themed front lawns.

Excellent Cam Cole take on Keith Ballard, who has embraced his new role as Vancouver’s third line midfielder (TM @Hosea24hours). Money quote from the consistently funny Vancouver defenseman, "“You know, soon as I switched to wing I turned my brain off, and started complaining to the D — that’s what forwards do, right?” [Vancouver Sun]

Speaking of money quotes from Keith Ballard, check out this beauty he gave to the always readable Jordan Bowman, when Jordan asked him whether or not pirates or astronauts are cooler: "Well are we talking fictional pirates or real pirates? Fictional pirates are pretty cool, but real pirates are scum." It’s funny because it’s true. [Legion of Blog]

Really good stuff here from Daniel Wagner on how Vancouver’s lines are performing, and how they stack up against the rest of the NHL. The well reached and intuitive conclusion: "the Canucks’ top two lines are above the league average, with the third line about average and the fourth line a little below average. That’s nothing a new third-line centre (or the return of a very good second-line center) won’t fix." [Pass it to Bulis]

Redditer "hottestofhands" had too much time on his hottest of hands:

It’s hard to imagine a team more banged up than the Canucks are lately, but according to James Mirtle they’re only tied for twelfth in the NHL in terms of "man games lost to injury per game." [Globe and Mail]

Matt Lee and J.J. Guerrero discuss whether or not the Canucks would be best served by standing pat, or whether they should go for it at the trade deadline. [Canucks Hockey Blog]

Tony Gallagher thinks this years Canucks are pretty much last years Canucks, except y’know without their second line centre, with way less extreme zone-start deployment patterns, they haven’t spent a third of the season sheltering a rookie to showcase him for a trade, they’re a way better possession team, Cory Schneider is starting the majority of games, and the power-play has fallen off a cliff. But other than that totally the same team with the exact same issues. [The Province]

Sean Zandberg takes his weekly look at how the Canucks are doing in assorted MSM power rankings. [Nucksmisconduct]

Ben Kuzma catches up with Roberto Luongo and chats with him about his still uncertain future. Luongo is the absolute fucking man. [The White Towel]

In "holy hell was Tuesday night’s game boring" coverage, Harrison Mooney looks at how Luongo passed the time, while David Ebner bemoans the lack of entertainment value. [Pass it to Bulis/Globe and Mail]

Really interesting profile of Zack Kassian from Ed Willes. Kassian tells Willes that he’s a "playoff player," and I don’t necessarily doubt the veracity of that at all, though it would be cool to see him be consistent in the regular season too. [The Province]

Finally I’m sick and tired of hearing all this "start Schneider" "no, start Luongo" hemming and hawing from Canucks fans. Clearly the Canucks should start Dan Hamhuis in goal: