The Vancouver Canucks are not having a very good season.
Their 6-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night -- a loss so decisive that Ryan Suter, who spent seven years with the Nashville Predators, complained it made for boring hockey -- was their 21st defeat in just 32 games. Only the Columbus Blue Jackets have lost more games. And while the Pacific Division's comic ineptitude is keeping the Canucks' slim playoff hopes alive, one gets the sense that most fans know a losing season when they see one -- especially those old enough to remember the 90s, like Vancouver Sun columnist Iain MacIntyre.
"After existing for most of the last 15 years among the NHL’s wealthy, successful first class, the Canucks are spiralling towards the franchise’s first dark era since the late 1990s," writes MacIntyre.
I don't like this kind of negativity. I'm not delusional, mind you. I saw the game last night. Plus I remember the Canucks in 2011, steamrolling the weakerthans on their way to the Presidents' Trophy, and it seemed clear to me as the Wild piled up goals that the Canucks have gone from the thrasher to the thrashee. Or the Thrashers.
Which means it's time to start spinning this season. It's time to change the way we look at it, to muster up some filter through which the entire debacle looks like a success.
You scoff, but this is the Vancouver way. No one spins a poor outcome like a Vancouver hockey fan, and I'll tell you why: it's usually all we've got to work with. Lord knows, when you're winning, the most important thing is winning, since it's an attainable goal. But when victory eludes, it's time to move the goalposts. Suddenly, literal victory becomes moral victory, for instance.
Or how about how none of the team's superstar forwards have been able to do much in the playoffs, so we simply decided Stanley Cup success was less important to a Vancouver player's legacy than charity and community work? I certainly don't have a problem with this new way of looking at things, but let's be clear: the moment someone leads the Canucks to a Stanley Cup, we'll move the goalposts back.
Think of the statue outside Rogers Arena, in which Roger Neilson waves a towel. We built a statue venerating a public, military-style surrender in a game the Canucks lost. But of course we did. Winning was out of the question. So instead, we decided the most important thing was having the last word. Neilson's act of defeated sarcasm act may not have won the game, but at least it won the moment. Plus it challenged the integrity of the game itself, so the winners couldn't even enjoy their victory, tainted as it was. I will always be in favour of a statue in honour of sarcastic defiance. That, too, is the Vancouver way.
Honestly, I think we rioted the second time because of spin. The first time it was just a reaction. The second time, we had to riot. If we didn't, it'd be like saying the 2011 run didn't mean as much to us as the 1994 run. But that would be unfair to the guys that laid it all on the line trying to surpass 1994, and since Vancouverites are nothing if not equitable and empathetic, well, you know the rest.
We love spin here. Consider this Kerry Fraser anecdote, in which Dave "Tiger" Williams talks his way out of a lengthy suspension after breaking his wooden hockey stick over the helmetless head of Capitals' defenceman Randy Holt in an untelevised game:
For the next 15 minutes, Tiger talked about hunting grizzly bears with a bow and arrow. He was very detailed in describing the size and weight of these huge wild animals he had bagged and turned into rugs. Tiger made it clear that, when one of those beast charges, you need to make sure you have the equipment to knock it down and stop it dead in its tracks. He said the only way to kill one of those monsters is with an aluminum arrow. I was fascinated to see where Tiger was going with all this, and then he set the hook.
Leaning forward in his chair a little, toward Mr. O’Neill, he looked the vice-president right in the eye and said, “Brian, that’s why I use a wooden hockey stick and not aluminum, because if I hit Holt with an aluminum stick, even with the slightest amount of force, he wouldn’t have gotten up—Randy Holt would have been dead just like the grizz.”
I couldn’t believe my ears but Tiger kept on going, driving it home. He spoke with such confidence and deliberation, even though it didn’t make any sense to me.
“Brian, my wooden stick just splintered like a twig. They break easy—that’s why I use them. Randy Holt never even fell down when I ran into him, and my wooden stick broke. Ask Fraser.”
What a beautiful load of horsehock this is. With just a little spin, Tiger goes from a McSorleyesque, stick-swinging monster to a charitable protector. Sure, I broke my hockey stick over his head, but Brian, that's why I use this stick: so when I crack a man over the head with it, it breaks. That's the heart of a Canuck right there.
Which brings us to now. Things aren't going so well on Planet Canucks, but that's only because we're not spinning the planet hard enough. It's time to move the goalposts, to tap into our distinctly Vancouvery tradition and find some way to make it true, and inspiringly, satisfyingly so, when we say:
The Vancouver Canucks are having a very good season.
