Locker Clean-Out Day came earlier than usual this year, so now what?

This joke we made last night seemed to confound some people, but unfortunately, it wasn’t a mistake on our part. What it was, was a sad truth; the Canucks did in fact win their final game of the season for the first time since ’05-’06, and as their reward they’ll now have longer than usual to pick up the pieces and figure out what went wrong.

With missing the playoffs for the first time in 5 years came a premature locker clean-out day, with both the players and the coach facing the media one last time before going their separate ways. We’ll get into some of the choice quotes that came from it just past the jump. We’ll also go over a couple of roster moves the team made this morning, and look ahead to what’s next for both the Canucks and this blog.

This is a move that was expected, but nonetheless isn’t something that should just be glossed over. Both Jensen and Corrado will provide quite a beneficial shot in the arm to a Utica Comets squad that is scratching and clawing for a playoff spot until the bitter end. Based on how big a hole they dug themselves with their extensive early season struggles, it’s amazing that they’re still mathematically alive.. but they somehow are.

The AHL’s official website has a nice little primer which effectively paints a picture of the landscape. By the looks of it the Comets still face a rather uphill battle, but weird things happen in the AHL, and as long as they’re still mathematically alive anything is possible. They’re 4 points out of that final spot with 3 games in hand, but even if they’re unable to leapfrog the teams ahead of them this’ll at the very least provide two guys who figure to be up for roster spots with the big club to start next year with some useful experience.

Yesterday was something of a big night for Corrado in an otherwise meaningless game, as he scored a goal for the first time at the NHL level. While it was a shot that Karri Ramo would probably like to have back, I will say that Corrado’s continued ability to get shots from the point through traffic and on net is something that’s a legitimate weapon.

First off, the most important news that came from it all was that Daniel Sedin appears to be fine after his CT scan checked out. He reportedly doesn’t have any sort of concussion symptoms, though it’s nice that he’ll have some time to rest up now given the propensity for those things to flare back up after the fact.

Many reports that were present on the scene were tweeting out all sorts of goods, but if there’s just one timeline you have to scour, it’s David Ebner’s. He seemed to catch onto this narrative guys like Henrik Sedin and Kevin Bieksa were crafting with all of their pleas for the team to “reload” rather than “rebuild”. While saying something like “we were playing with the best in the league until Christmas” is oversimplifying things and conveniently overlooking some key things, I still tend to side with that line of thinking over completely blowing everything up.

Kevin Bieksa in particular isn’t wrong. The team did get obscenely unlucky from top to bottom, and with a couple of timely moves this summer, they could see their fortunes reverse rather quickly. Of course one of those moves is likely getting rid of the coach, who based on the way he has been handling interviews over the past few days, seems like a guy that sees the writing on the wall. 

I am still of the belief that Tortorella isn’t long for this job once Trevor Linden “downloads all of his data”. It’s tough to argue with the fact that the team should go in a different direction in that regard after he spent all year trying to force a square peg into a round hole, neutering the team in the process because of his refusal to adapt.

We’re not going anywhere. While there won’t be any games to cover on this platform, it looks like we’ll be just as busy as we otherwise would’ve been. The NHL Draft Lottery is tomorrow at 5 PM PST, and we’ll be hosting a live chat much like the one we did for the trade deadline back in March. Hopefully you can come spend some time with us then, supplementing the viewing experience. 

After that, we’ll have all sorts of draft previews and profiles as soon as we have a better idea of who will be available once it’s Vancouver’s turn to pick. There will also surely be a bunch of “sooo what went wrong?” stuff that we’ll be running, to go along with a GM profile series, and maybe, just maybe, even another head coach series for the second straight summer. 

Taking a second away from our calm, cool, and collected approach on this platform, I’d just like to thank all of you guys and gals out there that have made an effort to read the work we post on here, and make the comments section an *interesting* place. All of you are A-OK in my books (yes, even you, NM00). 

It has been a rather miserable season and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to take a step back from it all to enjoy your summer in peace, but just know that we’ll still be here all the way through till next Fall’s training camp. Even during the dog days.