Hosea Cheung of 24 Hours wrote this after today’s Canucks practice:

With Vancouver skating at UBC - due to ‘So you think you can dance Canada’ being held at GM Place -, an altercation between Willie Mitchell and Mason Raymond highlighted this team’s state of mind. Apparently, Mitchell hit Raymond hard on a check and when Raymond went back at the veteran defensemen, Mitchell punched the youngster in the head and gave him a cross-check to the shoulders. Then Shane O’Brien, Mitchell’s stall partner, came in to defend Raymond and challenged Mitchell to a fight, or at least to protect the much smaller Raymond. However, coaches and players intervened in time before anything got serious.

Cheung reports that in the press conference back at GM Place, the incident was explained away as “spill over”, emphasizing that “at the end of the day, we’re all friends.”

With auditions for “So you think you can dance, Canada?” going on just a few feet away from that Canucks press conference, I’m hoping someone managed to spot the irony.