By Canucks Fanz Columnist: Shaheed Devji
The term “bandwagon” is oft used when it comes to professional sports teams in the city of Vancouver. The Canucks are not only no exception in this matter, in relation to the term they stand at center stage. Each year, throughout the Canucks’ season fans are said to “jump” on and off the bandwagon, supporting the team when it has success and shunning it during times of struggle. 

Throughout the course of this season, the praising and shunning has come in spurts due to the Canucks’ inconsistent play, and has seen the bandwagon starting and stopping more than any vehicle, caught in traffic on today’s Cambie Street in downtown Vancouver, would. The Canucks’ inconsistency can be attributed to a variety of factors none more important, however, than injuries and expectations. Vancouver has run into a plethora of injuries, which have been sustained in large part by its core defensive players. These injuries have induced a constantly changing roster, which has seen new faces every other week and thus has not allowed the team to gel and build chemistry as it may have wished.

The second factor of the Canucks’ inconsistency is expectations. After its first season with Roberto Luongo in goal, its relative regular season success and its demise in the playoffs, the Canucks’ strategy, style of play and reliance had been widely publicized. With this publicity, it became increasingly difficult for Vancouver to take teams by surprise with its stellar and responsible defensive play and it is extensively known that if you can shut down the Canucks first line, a positive result usually ensues.

With this season’s inconsistency has come one common criticism: the Canucks cannot put together a game in which they outplay their opponent for an entire sixty minutes. While this criticism may coincidentally ring true for the Canucks, it is a common misconception that this inability to dominate a team for a full game has led to the team’s inconsistent and mediocre results. It has not. In fact, I would say that it is impossible for any team to do, on a nightly basis, what critics are calling for.

The new NHL, a league of parity, has on any given night two teams capable of defeating each other battling for on-ice supremacy. But this supremacy has its limits. Due to the league’s parity of talent, or of what some would call watered-down rosters, no one team is able to dominate another during the duration of a game. If any one team were able to do so, this team would be leaps and bounds ahead of the rest when it comes to the standings. A quick glance at the NHL standings over the past two years tells you that this has not been the case. It is just too difficult.

What does put one team ahead of another in terms of it being a serious contender for the Stanley Cup in any given year, and what the Canucks have been lacking this season, is its ability – at the risk of sounding cliché – to come through in the clutch. Last season, the Canucks’ remarkable second half propelled it into the playoffs as Northwest Division Champions. This astonishing run of winning hockey that Vancouver put together was due in large part to its uncanny ability to produce big plays at important times. Players such as Roberto Luongo, who would make incredible saves at the most vital of times, or the Sedins, who seemingly scored every overtime winner, would provide the Canucks with game-changing plays when it needed the most. In other words, last year – again through dependence on a stock sports cliché – the Canucks’ star players were their star players. This has not been the case this season.

Vancouver’s inconsistency this season derives from its inability to produce in the clutch. On many an occasion, the Canucks have failed to score an all important goal that would put them ahead by two or three, or have not received the big save at a time which they needed, nor have they been able to prevent their opponent from scoring goals in the last minute of periods or from coming back from an apparent insurmountable deficit. And although the boys in blue and green have posted one of the league’s best records when leading at the start of the third period, their problems have often come earlier in games and have impeded them at times from entering the third period with a lead.

If the Vancouver Canucks hope to not only retain their Division title, which was a product of their style of play during the stretch drive last year, but build upon their relative playoff success and move past the second round, they need to make certain adjustments. What needs to be adjusted is not the Canucks ability to dominate their opponent for a full sixty minutes because this is seemingly impossible, but rather they must adjust and improve their ability to outplay their opponent when it counts the most. The capabilities to score or prevent a big goal, to come up with a big save or hit at an opportune moment in a game are what separate good teams from potentially great teams. And judging from the Canucks’ quandaries this season right now, the Canucks are just a good team.

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