(Photo courtesy canucks.com)

The Vancouver Canucks continued their masterwork in choke artistry Tuesday night, blowing a 2-0 lead to the Colorado Avalanche en route to a 4-2 loss. This was the third time in a week the Canucks snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, having coughed up leads to the Avs last Wednesday and to Calgary the night before that.

Add to this that the fucking St. Louis Blues blew their 3-0 lead to lose 4-3 against Nashville in overtime, and the Canucks are out of the playoffs.

Nashville has two games remaining against St. Louis and Chicago. The Canucks play Edmonton and Calgary. Our only hope is that the Blues and Blackhawks have all Nashville’s “easy schedule” press clippings posted on their dressing room walls, and they use them to get fired up and beat the Predators. Even if Vancouver wins both games, unless Nashville loses at least one, or Calgary loses both of their remaining games, they’re finished.

It’s safe to say the situation is dire. But does it really matter? Even if the Canucks get into the playoffs, what are the chances they’ll make it past anyone, let alone Detroit, which would likely be their first-round matchup? The Coach and I were talking via the mobile telephony device the other day, and he said that maybe missing the playoffs is the best thing that could happen to this team.

I think there’s merit to this controversial view. Missing the playoffs would shatter the illusion that this team does anything but rely on Roberto Luongo night in and night out, and put a lot more pressure on GM Dave Nonis to make some significant changes in the off-season. Let’s face it: aside from the brilliant Luongo trade and signing Willie Mitchell, Nonis has done nothing to improve this roster. All of his other signings/acquisitions have consisted of trading one interchangeable spare part for another.

Last season, the Canucks won the division and made it into the secound round of the playoffs largely on the jaw-dropping, superhuman brilliance of Roberto Luongo’s goaltending. This season, he’s been merely excellent. (People who say Luongo is to blame for the Canucks’ troubles are fucking idiots. Without him, the Canucks would be competing with L.A. for the title of worst team in the league instead of fighting for a playoff spot.)

Luongo’s being merely excellent hasn’t been enough to plaster over the team’s glaring deficiencies up front. The Sedin twins, while
fun to watch for their otherworldly telepathic connection on the ice, are not enough to build a franchise around. Markus Naslund and Brendan Morrison, both instrumental in the high-scoring, free-wheeling days of the Marc Crawford era, are in the final years of their contracts and hampered by Alain Vigneault’s stifling, defence-first coaching system.

It’s pointless to start picking apart AV’s coaching style this late in the season, and we’ve carped on about it before, so we’ll leave it at that. Until now, Vigneault and Nonis have been able to hide behind Luongo’s goaltending. But when that isn’t enough anymore, maybe we’ll start to see the changes this club needs in order to succeed. It seems clear that isn’t going to happen with the present lineup. So missing the playoffs might not be the worst thing that could happen.

- The Sieve

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