Still waiting for some Compound W
OFFENSIVE WARTS: Questions remain in Canucks’ goal-scoring department despite season-opening wins
In honour of the baseball playoffs, here’s our own version of the fall classic: The musings and meditations on the world of sports.
After watching the Vancouver Canucks through the first two games of their regular season, it seems they’ve come pretty much as advertised.
Goaltending shouldn’t be a problem. The blue-line shouldn’t be a problem.
Goal scoring? Now, there’s the problem.
With so many of the Canucks in the embryonic stages of their career, it’s hard to know what to expect on a night-in, night-out basis this season and their weekend series didn’t provide any answers.
Yes, the two third-period rallies produced two wins and no one is going to ask in April how the Canucks earned those four points. But that offensive wart is still sitting there in the middle of the team’s forehead. Loui Eriksson had one shot on goal over the weekend. The power play went 0-for-6. The Sedins had moments, just not enough of them.
But in the long run, the real issue here is the contribution of the young players and right now that’s a great unknown.
The Canucks have six players aged 24 or less — Jake Virtanen, Ben Hutton, Sven Baertschi, Brendan Gaunce, Bo Horvat and Markus Granlund — playing regular roles to start this season. They also hold the keys to the team’s present and its future. If they all take a step forward this season, the Canucks will be fine, but the team’s chances of being competitive diminishes with each player whose development stalls.
This, in fact, becomes the issue on which Willie Desjardins should ultimately be judged. If the young players continue to develop under the head coach’s watch, then the Canucks’ rebuilding plan will be on schedule. If they stagnate, the Canucks will be a mess.
Either way, this is on Desjardins and his staff and no one should have to explain the consequences of a failed mission.
On a related note, you can credit Desjardins for abandoning his opening-night line configuration, but what made him think they’d work in the first place?
The Canucks’ second-best centre is Horvat. He has to play with skilled players. Gaunce is a big body who can skate. He makes an ideal fourthline centre and he’ll have room to grow from that position. Virtanen was the sixth-overall pick in a deep draft and his development is a priority for this organization.
Then there’s Nikita Tryamkin. The Canucks have a mobile, 6-foot7, 250-pound defenceman and they have to find out if he can play at the NHL level. If that means sacrificing Philip Larsen, so be it. Larsen is a 26-year who’s already failed in the best league in the world. If you think he’s the answer to your team’s power-play problems, those problems are bigger than you think.
Sometimes, the game is as complicated as you make it. The Canucks’ problems are real enough. There’s no need to overthink them.
Onward, the Seattle Seahawks are 4-1, which ties for the fastest start in franchise history. But this team is a shadow of the 2014 Super Bowl team and if you were wondering about the difference, we refer you to Marshawn Lynch and the hole he has left in the Hawks’ offence.
There were five key moments in Sunday’s win over Atlanta when the Seahawks turned to their run game and each time it was stuffed like a turkey. On the game, they would produce 72 puny yards on the ground for a woeful 2.7 yards per carry. On the season, they’re averaging 3.2 yards per carry, which is 30th in the 32-team league.
The problem is the run game is a crucial part of Pete Carroll’s offence and Carroll remains stubbornly committed to it. When they had Lynch, he was the club they used to pound the other team into submission. He also set up Russell Wilson’s lethal play-action game.
But without the threat of a run, the Seahawks’ offence becomes all about Wilson. Coupled with the Seahawks defence, he’s good enough to beat most teams in the NFL. But win another championship? Don’t see it.
It’s hard to believe the Toronto Blue Jays will expire this quietly after all the noise they’ve made over the last three weeks, but their inability to produce offence against a banged-up Indians pitching staff has been shocking.
You might understand this if Terry Francona’s team had Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, their No. 2 and No. 3 starters, available. Or if Trevor Bauer had given them more than two-thirds of an inning in the ALCS.
But this? Three runs in three games? With a berth in the World Series on the line? The Jays, if you needed reminding, scored 27 runs in their first four post-season games and finished fifth in the AL in runs scored in the regular season and third in homers. And it’s like they’re taking whiffle bats to the plate against the Indians.
On Monday, a 4-2 Indians win that gave them a 3-0 stranglehold in the series, Cleveland threw seven pitchers at the Jays and not all of them were Cody Allen or Andrew Miller. But they might as well have been. The Indians are scheduled to start ace Corey Kluber in Game 4. They might start someone named Ryan Merritt in Game 5. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter who they throw out there.
And finally, if you just looked at the back of Dave Keon’s hockey card, you’d wonder how he could be named the best Maple Leaf of all time. But if you think of Keon as the Jonathan Toews of his era, it begins to make sense. Keon never put up big numbers, but he was the linchpin of four Stanley Cup teams and a peerless two-way centre.
The sad part was Keon, like so many Leafs of the Harold Ballard era, became estranged from the organization and his separation was especially bitter.
It would run through three decades, long after Ballard passed, and through several Leafs ownership groups. After a while, most of the Leafs came back to the fold, but Keon stayed out in the cold, a lonely, melancholic figure.
It’s hard to know if he has forgiven and forgotten completely, but he was there when the team retired his jersey and there when he was named the greatest Leaf of all-time and that was nice to see. His generation of players was brutally exploited by the owners and the game and their resentment is completely understandable.
But if you were a Canadian kid raised in the 1960s, they were, and remain, heroes. I hope Keon understands that. I hope he understands he’s part of our story, part of our collective memory and he’s important. Anger is a powerful emotion. But there are others more powerful and I hope Keon felt their pull.