Headshots January 16th

A fake screenshot of Luongo’s gmail inbox via The Whistle.
Click here to enlarge.

I got some good chuckles out of the above "Luongo’s (fake) gmail inbox" graphic from TheWhistle.com, so I thought I’d link to them again and urge you to give them some traffic. I particularly like the Eklund joke, and the Sedin twins’ g-chat status.

Harrison Mooney makes an interesting point over at Pass it to Bulis, namely that David Booth’s injury might do more to determine whether or not diminutive pivot Jordan Schroeder can make the Canucks this season than his performance at this week’s accelerated training camp. Tough break!

In the wake of David Booth’s injury, Jason Botchford writes about Vancouver’s secondary scoring issues. Botch drops an Luongo nugget (though not exactly a surprising one), namely that the Canucks won’t rush into a Luongo trade simply because David Booth got hurt. He also points out two things about Vancouver’s Booth-less forward lineup that are almost surely dead on. First, he points out a seeming inevitability: that the third-line of Chris Higgins, Maxim Lapierre and Jannik Hansen are likely to play more minutes than the ostensible second line of Andrew Ebbett (or Jordan Schroeder), Zack Kassian and Mason Raymond. You can pretty much take that one to the bank. Secondly he mentions that Vigneault will need to work hard to manage the match-ups and deployment of that "second line". Luckily for Canucks fans – whatever else you think of Alain Vigneault – we can count on him to do that much at least. 

I’m going to take a second and plug my own stuff because I spent a boatload of time building a model to try and predict Vancouver’s goal totals this season. I’ll be rolling it out over at the Play Now Blog all week, but here’s the first installment wherein I use math and stuff to forecast the number of goals Henrik and Daniel Sedin will score in the lockout shortened 2013 NHL season.

This is must read stuff from Cam Cole on Roberto Luongo, @strombone1 as a creative outlet, and how social media can impact the public’s perception of professional athletes. Not only is it an excellent take, but Cole gets Luongo to break the fourth wall and talk about Twitter and @Strombone1 (albeit vaguely) as his actual tangible self! That’s pretty cool, and the first time we’ve seen it. Cam Cole isn’t always my cup of tea, but the versatility and intelligence on display in this column is spell-binding.

Read past the jump for more links and caustic comments and such.

We’re so very, very proud of our Smylosphere brethren over at Nucksmisconduct who finished third in the Battle of California’s SBN blog profanity rankings. The best part about their third place finish? They’re trending upwards. With RudyKelly moving on from BoC and the guard changing over at St. Louis Game Time – I’m thinking Nucksmisconduct can take the poll position this year, especially now that they’ve got that shit head Mitch on staff. Check this links post from today, dude swears like a sailor (MVP! MVP!).

Damien Cox misses the mark by a mile on Roberto Luongo’s trade value. Best part about that column? It led to this exchange between Cox and Botchford:

Classic. So who do you think would have a tougher time agreeing on a price for Roberto Luongo by the way – Cox and Botch, or Gillis and Burke? It’s a fun new parlour game!

Tony Gallagher is interested to see how Alain Vigneault uses his goaltenders this weekend and going forward, assuming Luongo remains in a Canucks jersey which I still somewhat doubt he will, even though I don’t really have no clue at this point. For what it’s worth, Luongo has struggled against the Oilers and the Ducks in the recent past and was gathering cobwebs in Florida while Schneider was playing games in Switzerland so I think I’d assume that Schneider gets tapped for both games. 

Finally, Jim Jamieson breaks down the power-play units Canucks assistant coach Newell Brown is running in practice, with a focus on Jannik Hansen’s Sedin-requested opportunity on the first unit. Frankly, I think the speedy Dane is going to run with it, and have a breakout offensive season.