Canucks and Beyond

Blame the Players

04/04/2008 at 6:20pm EDT

For what it’s worth, Darren Dreger at TSN has a theory:

On a decent night, the Vancouver Canucks generate 15 scoring chances. On home-ice Thursday night the Canucks charted 24 scoring opportunities, were awarded almost 17 minutes in power play time and became a non-playoff team, partly, by not being able to score more than one goal against the Edmonton Oilers in the biggest game of the year.
There’s no question injuries factored in to Vancouver’s demise, but key players failed to deliver when this team needed them most.
Down the stretch, Roberto Luongo wasn’t good enough. Down the stretch, the Sedins were not good enough.
The list goes on.

Could Luongo & the Sedins have been better? Sure. But as for ‘down the stretch’, the Sedins gathered 18 points in the last 9 games. How much more would have been “good enough”?

Last year, the Canucks’ Jack Adams coach Alain Vigneault got the credit for taking this supposedly- wretched group of miscreants as far as the 2nd round of the playoffs. But this year, it is the players who get the blame when they don’t get there again.

Seems like a pretty good deal if you’re on the coaching staff or management of this team.

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