Poor NHL. I understand their legal position, but seriously… the mind boggles. Next thing I know, it’ll be a “copyright infringement” to wear my own jersey to work.

[Update: Great piece from Eric Rolfsen on this whole “Apparently We Are NOT All Canucks” fiasco]

Anyway, onwards…

Elliott Pap, Vancouver Sun:

Although Trotz did concede that maybe the Canucks took it to his boys for the first half of the game -shots were 23-6 in Vancouver’s favour at that point -he mostly pointed an accusing finger at his own bench.

He did it following the game and he did it again on Friday. “Everything that was written and said about us, and everything I said and our players said about themselves, was all true,” Trotz stated.

“What we need to do is get back to our identity. You didn’t see that in Game 1. As a group, I think we took that personally. We talked about it, we went through it and we parked it.”

Barry Trotz is doing a formidable job motivating his team by shaming them and trying to kickstart their pride. Tonight’s game is likely to feature a much more emotional and focused (and predatory?) group of Predators.

Josh Cooper, The Tennessean:

That is why the Canucks expect a different Predators team today.

“Any team that has a Vezina player there and a Norris Trophy-nominated player and the balance that they have, is a much better team than people are giving them credit for,” Vancouver Coach Alain Vigneault said. “We know we have to be at our best.”

Cam Cole at the Vancouver Sun points out some of the hardware being flashed around the Canucks/Predators series:

• Two executive of the year finalists, in Nashville’s David Poile and Vancouver’s Mike Gillis.

• Two Vezina finalists in Predators’ Pekka Rinne and Canucks’ Roberto Luongo.

• Finalists for the Hart (Daniel Sedin) and Selke (Ryan Kesler) trophies on one side and for the Norris (Shea Weber) on the other.

Not to mention that already in the bag are Daniel’s Art Ross Trophy, the Jennings Trophy won by Luongo and Cory Schneider, and, of course, the Marcel Marceau Award for playoff omerta, a prize long since retired by Vancouver head coach Alain Vigneault.

Kind of makes you wonder how Game 1 could have been such a dud.

With all the talk about Pekka Rinne being a difference maker in this series, I don’t think he’s getting into the Canucks heads yet, but he’s sure gotten intoeveryone else’s.

Speaking of which, the one goal the Canucks did manage to score against is broken down here, frame by frame, where we can relive it again and again… in case no one ever scores on Rinne ever again.

By the way, Sami Salo skated today. He’s not playing tonight, but he’s traveling to Nashvile for #3 and #4, according to the barrage of Twitterers which blew up my phone. So that’s good.

Finally, some more third line praise for the Canucks. (Although, given that Tony Gallagher wrote that piece, I’d guess it’s not so much about praising Lapierre and Higgins, as it is him looking for new and more subtle ways to publicly declare his love for Mike Gillis.)
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*Kidding, of course.