The Saturday night second half of CBC’s HNIC (hockey night in Canada) opened with a bang as the Vancouver Canucks stirred their home crowd from anticipating to boisterous.

After a demoralizing loss to the San Jose Sharks, where the Edmonton Oilers grabbed an early lead, only to lose 5-4 in a shootout, the rested Canucks were just too much.
Oilers head coach Pat Quinn on the pivotal first period: “We actually had a couple of good shifts to start and then bang, it was like a deluge, and the harder we tried the worse we got.”
Christian Ehrhoff notched the games’ first goal [...]

During a night with numerous subplots, it was Roberto Luongo stealing the limelight with  a 31 save performance, including a highlight reel breakaway stop.
For the first time in three attempts, the Vancouver Canucks made a team that played the night previous pay for having tired legs.  They were unsuccessful with Detroit and Chicago in this regard, but established a tight forecheck early, and continued taking the body, to good effect.  Tanner Glass was exceptional in this regard, and was rewarded with a goal in the third period for his efforts.  Interestingly enough, the crowd booed when his goal was announced, [...]

Chicag-O-ed (shih-caw-gohd): To be defeated by an organization or team from Chicago, not having scored any goals; devoid of offensive output.
Last spring, the Vancouver Canucks found themselves knee-deep in trouble with big names from Chicago in their second round series with the Blackhawks.  Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Nikolai Khabibulin, Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith, the list scrolls down.  But on a wet, cold November night in Vancouver, it was rookie goaltender Antti Niemi making headlines.  ‘Hawks coach Joel Quenneville even labelled the performance ’spectacular’.  “What an effort.  What a game. That was a goalie win. Hopefully you get 5 or 6 [...]

After falling behind a pair of powerplay goals, the Vancouver Canucks shook the week old rust off, roaring back in the third period versus the Avalanche.
To be frank, there wasn’t much to like about the Canucks’ 1st period, turning over the puck regularly in the neutral zone, and being outraced to multiple loose pucks.   The Tanner Glass line, however, made a point of grinding it out, and refusing to relent on the checking, -both fore and body.  Though his hands will take a little while to warm up to handling the puck and one-time opportunities, Jannik Hansen utilized all 21 [...]

With the Vancouver Canucks currently awaiting their home and home rematch with the Colorado Avalanche on Friday, perhaps we’ll catch a breath and review the top 10 players by grade.

10)   Michael Grabner, C+
The Villach, Austria native had a head of steam behind him before he went down with an unfortunate broken ankle suffered in a pre-game warmup   November  1st .  In 9 games (rookie season), he has 5 points (2-3), all on the  powerplay.  Blessed with blazing speed, nice injection on the PP.

9)   Kevin Bieksa, C+
“Boom Boom” as he’s referred to on CFOX (99.3 fm) radio has had [...]

On a night in Denver, Colorado when a possible white out loomed over the city, the Vancouver Canucks descended early, blanketing the Avalanche 8-2.
Henrik ‘Hank’ Sedin lead the way for the Canucks, netting his first ever hat trick.  A parade of other players got in on the scoring, including Matthieu Schneider, Tanner Glass, Jannik Hansen, while Steve Bernier chipped in a couple.
Vancouver jumped out quickly, thanks in part to numerous plays where they went hard to the net.  LW Mason Raymond prior to the game: “Colorado is hot right now, and a big part of it is (Avalanche goalie Craig) [...]

As a recent comment post by ‘CB’ pointed out, the Vancouver Canucks have a difficult time defeating the Detroit Red Wings, especially at the Joe Louis arena.  Thursday night was no exception.
Though Vancouver doesn’t play as often in Detroit as other Western conference teams, they are still without a regulation win there in three years.   Roberto Luongo started his first game since Oct. 27 when he aggravated a broken rib against Detroit.  He stopped 26 shots, and though Vancouver outplayed the Red Wings for most of the game, they left ‘The Joe’ without anything to show for it but a [...]

After defeating the St. Louis Blues four games to nothing in front of their own crowd in Missouri during the 2009 Playoffs, the Vancouver Canucks were served a dish of humility Tuesday.
Andrew Raycroft got the start in goal and was 4-1 and had a 1.60 GAA (goals against average) coming into the contest.  “Obviously it was a tough period,” said Raycroft.  “Four goals in eight minutes is not good enough.”  But the blame didn’t lay solely at his feet.  The team, fresh from a three day respite, wasn’t ready for the motivated St. Louis Blues.  “We wanted to be good [...]