Headshots October 15

Headshots are a Canucks Army feature where we link to the day’s freshest news, and other assorted Canucks web-goodies. If you’ve written a blogpost, produced a tribute video, birthed a clever .gif into existence, or have a hockey related cause that you’d like to see promoted in this space – please e-mail Thom at thom.drance@gmail.com

The big story in hockey today is that Deadspin got a hold of some questions a public relations firm working for the NHL asked a D.C. focus group last Friday. The documents themselves are interesting because they paint a look at the NHL’s future labour strategy—specifically, that revenue sharing isn’t going to be a big issue. “A distraction”, one prepared statement calls it. “You’ve got to deal with the economics… before you can ultimately resolve the other issues including revenue sharing”. It’s also interesting that the last page quoted a bit from Puck Daddy word for word about opening night. Also, the stock fighting image they used was of Derek Boogaard fighting Raitis Ivanans.

Our buddy Wyatt Arndt at the Legion of Blog gave a quick take. “Amusingly enough, in an attempt to win the PR battle, these leaked documents will do far more to damage the NHL’s reputation to the common fan.” A part of me hopes that the NHL is myopic enough to try and use the “shared sacrifice” line in the coming weeks.

In Vancouver news, Alex Edler is still dealing with back issues. Thom looks more in-depth at what a “bulging disc” actually is, while Botchford has a take over at the Province today as how this could impact negotiations, suggesting they may get favourable treatment from the Swedish blueliner since the team is taking it upon themselves to treat Edler’s back spasms. Personally, I think that’s a bit of a stretch.

…but not the stretch I made today over at the Leafs Nation as to possible reasons why Toronto Maple Leafs’ goalie James Reimer was skating with the Vancouver Canucks at UBC this afternoon (that’s mostly in response to a real dumb column written by Steve Simmons this weekend). Photo above is via David Ebner.

Our blog-nemies Pass it to Bulis had a strong showing at Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer in Vancouver yesterday. PitB raised a lot of money to the cause, and Daniel Wagner had the pleasure of stopping Canuck legend Thomas Gradin on a breakaway. All around that sounds like a pretty cool event, and kudos to all who donated and participated.