#blue.analysis

image for reference:

during the shootout against calgary on march 12, this is exactly where petey put his shot on wolf. see video here:

and it's also where huberdeau was able to get one past lanks. see pic here:

*more of a retool than a rebuild 😶

This is mostly for fun but i have felt very strongly about it all year and needed to get it out. If you also feel passionately about this, join me and share your own musings/ideas!

Captains can’t enter the referee crease unless invited like some sort of vampire…🧍‍♂️

How important and serious the captaincy role is taken. No other sport really puts the role on quite as high a pedestal.

Blocking shots (as a skater) is not only normal but a strategy and responsibility. Willingly putting your body in the line of fire of a hard projectile. With a not-low risk of being in pain if you’re successful. Is this evident in any other major sport??

Goalie tandems bc i can’t imagine what it’s like to have a role where you’re a second string/backup and want to prove your worth but you also want your team to do well, which means you DON’T get put in the game. Of course you’re rooting for your counterpart. But of course *you* want to play. And if the team’s success comes without you, you have to be okay with that. The inner machinations of goalies’ minds are an enigma 😵‍💫

Goalies get to design their mask and gear and they are always so excited about it :) and it’s the only major 4 sport where just one player gets to be able to have that design freedom on their gear

Fans throwing hats onto the ice when a players gets a hat trick. So silly but so fun. Yay sports traditions 👏

Line names! I love line names!! These guys have so much synergy and chemistry and success together that we MUST give them an honorific

The only player you can sub out/replace is goalie. If any other player can’t continue in the game, you just have to deal with it. There aren’t any backup forwards or dmen. There’s a strictness and commitment i like about that. And i don’t think that’s emphasized enough when discussing sports.

The intimacy of knowing how your teammates like to receive a pass and working to get it right. For them.

When players get a new blade in their skate on the bench and it looks like a horse getting a new shoe on their hoof

In a similar vein, the amount of gear hockey players wear. Basically every piece of equipment an athlete could wear. Because they are a human vessel for inertia. They are a weapon, draped in armor and sent into the foray.

Also when a player loses a blade while on the ice and the patheticism of trying to get to the bench…Flopping over. Down on one knee and using their good blade to slide. Being pushed and dragged by teammates AND refs

Goalies smacking their stick to let their teammates know when the power play is coming to an end. They’re always trying to be helpful 😌

Players giving pucks to fans during warmups. The direct interaction with the crowd like that is so essentially “hockey” and creates these great memories for fans ☺️ i love moments of human connection!

When a player scores and immediately after points to their teammate who gave them the assist. There’s a humility to that that. *I* may have scored but it wouldn’t have happened without *you* setting me up.

When a player is on hatty watch, their teammates are conscious of that and will do their best to try to set them up for their third goal to get them a hat trick

Centers have so much on their plate. They are responsible for driving play on their lines and scoring goals, but they also have a responsibility to take care of their linemates and help set *them* up for goals. Oh, and they also need to be totally solid defensively. I think of them kind of like an older sibling taking the lead while watching out for their little siblings (aka wingers).

Keeping the pucks for milestone goals/points as a souvenir. It’s just very cute and very human. 😌

🌀brock is the top 6 winger you are looking for🌀

At his best, Brock is a bonafide top 6 winger and averages 53 points per season. That’s nothing to turn one’s nose up at…But he embodies more than just numbers.

Brock Boeser is (amongst other things):

A fantastic human to have wearing your jersey and representing your club. Kind, wholesome, chill, classy. Never has anything bad said about him because he’s just a really good guy.

Incredibly resilient - probably more than any other Canuck, given the amount of personal tragedies and multiple physical injuries he’s already experienced. And he’s never been anything but a ray of sunshine throughout all of it.

The bridge between the previous era and now. Literally brought fans BACK to the franchise because of the hope HE provided.

A CORE MEMBER. THE *LONGEST-TENURED* CORE MEMBER. AND HE’S NOT EVEN 30.

YOU ALREADY HAVE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.

Brock has still hit 25 goals in a season where:

He got fucking concussed!!!

You traded his center he had the best chemistry with for years in January (and that was after that center was out of the lineup for several weeks). And the other center he was just getting back in sync with got injured.

There was constant noise around him, his contract, and the potential of him being traded (which he has had to endure *repeatedly* with this org). And much of this noise was management’s fault!!! Brock said himself that this trade deadline was the second-longest week of his life; the only week that was worse was when his father passed away. That’s fucking AWFUL (and rather damning, honestly).

Many forwards who had career years last season have struggled to produce consistently. Brock is not the only one.

The shitstorm of ~everything else~ happening with the team.

Can you blame him for not performing to last year’s ridiculous level?!? Nobody on this team (that’s left…) is going to hit last year’s numbers (edit: EXCEPT for our Swiss Army Knife Suter!!!). This cursed season has been nothing but rumors, drama, injuries, inconsistencies, INTERNAL pressure, and bad luck. Yes, professional athletes are supposed to perform no matter what. But they will always be human. And no human (not even the superhuman Quinn Hughes!) is impervious to the amount of chaos this team has weathered.

And as much as you (management) absolutely suck and publicly degrade your own players, he wants to STAY. That MEANS something. You preach and harp about “professionalism” and building the right culture - a standard which you seem to conveniently exempt yourselves from over and over - and have someone who has always embodied those traits. A homegrown (drafted) star who has a glowing reputation amongst his teammates, the fans, and in the whole fucking league. Who loves Vancouver and is loved in return. Yet you have never afforded him the proper respect he’s due. A running theme, it seems, with this franchise’s top brass. But you can change that narrative. Prove you are capable of returning the commitment Brock has always given to the team, through some very dark years where he was one of the few beacons of light.

Every player saying thank you to their goalie with a lil post-game head bump (love you! bonk!)

Rookie laps. Look at our boy!! 😊 🥹 Tell him congrats!! Be nice to him!!

When players doing faceoffs fall over lol. Like little kids Fighting So Hard they lose balance and end up on the ground. But that’s what happens during a joust when you’re fully bent over and your face is less than a foot from your opponent’s and you’re trying to use the lowest part of your stick to fling a rubber disk to your teammate in less than one second.

Dmen being the personal bodyguards for their goalie every time the goalie covers the puck/stops play. They materialize immediately and make sure to get in between their tendy and any players on the other team like 😤 back the fuck up!!!

Players looking up to the heavens (aka watching replays). The sports/religious imagery is never ending.

When a breakaway is happening and one player uses their stick to ‘boost’ the other in the hopes of catching up. Goofball behavior. A failed attempt is potentially very pathetic. That being said a successful attempt is very impressive and wowdidyouseethat?!

Big players basically stepping over the boards. Medium players jumping over the boards. Small players rolling log style over the boards.

The Rules of the Scrum. When a fight breaks out and players immediately look around to grab onto any jersey that's not theirs. and not even to fight. just to hold onto and keep close :) i'm keeping my eye on you and you're keeping your eye on me.

just. the whole concept of the penalty box. STOP EVERYTHING!!! you're in trouble!!! now go get encased in this glass box (because we simply must be able to still watch you NOT play hockey). sit here in shame and reflect on your actions (unlikely).

Goal horns. 📢 They’re obnoxious. They’re iconic. They’re strange. They’re unique. It’s not hockey without them.

Same vein: goal songs! Actual pavlov’s dog trigger when out in public hearing it play. WE SCORED? wait i’m in the grocery store.

Three Stars. It’s endearing to me how they give out lil ‘good job’ head pats to not one but THREE players every game.

Welcome to my ramblings…Please be warned that most of the time when I write shit like this, it’s just to get it out of my head. It is more flow of consciousness than a perfectly constructed essay, and it may not make sense to anyone else but me. :) Ok, here we go!

I’ve been thinking about relationships within sports and how there are specific roles that, due to the nature and requirements of the positions, are more closely bonded to each other than to their other teammates. The sports I’ve had the most exposure to are hockey, baseball, and (American) football. In each of these, I would say the players who have an extra layer to their relationships would be defensemen and goalies, catchers and pitchers, and wide receivers and quarterbacks. Due to my love for hockey and appreciation for baseball being deeper than my interest in football, I’m more drawn to the defenseman/catcher similarities and their respective pairings, but I will carve out some space to quickly talk about wide receivers and quarterbacks.

The basis of football is every player executing a specific job for every play. All 11 players need to be acting as one unit at all times. That being said, there can exist a unique tether between a wide receiver and a quarterback. Those positions operate with more freedom and creativity than what’s afforded to the other players. When they have a solid connection, it can be magical to witness. My hesitancy to include the WR/QB duo in this discussion comes from the fact that the sole purpose of the quarterback is to be in charge. They need to know where everyone is, initiate every single play, manage the game, and adapt when necessary. I would argue there’s no singular role in hockey or baseball that’s as pivotal or has as much responsibility as the QB does in football. I do recognize the special bond that can exist between a wide receiver and a quarterback, but I’ve decided it’s not quite the same as what I’m going to talk about. Now, back to hockey and baseball. 

I’m currently 1) a hockey defenseman enthusiast and 2) rediscovering my appreciation for baseball. I went – or rather, I was brought along – to a lot of baseball games growing up, so it’s taken a while to enjoy the game again, as opposed to being bored by it, especially when I would claim hockey as my primary love at this point. But as I seek baseball out more, I’ve grown particularly fond of the catcher position. It’s only recently that I’ve taken time to mull over the roles of defenseman and catcher and been able to discern why I am drawn to them, as well as (a bit surprisingly) the traits they share. While not a one-to-one comparison, I feel the connections between the two make them more alike than they are not. They’re cut from the same cloth. 

It’s tempting to draw a line between goalie and catcher – the extra gear, their locations relative to the action, their job requirements being to stop a flying projectile and to prevent opponents from scoring – but, to me, this isn’t totally accurate. Goalies exist in a different reality on the ice; we’ve heard time and time again, from goalies and non-goalies alike, that they’re playing a different game than everyone else. Furthermore, it’s very clear how important goalies are in the game of hockey. But I don’t think the average person would go to bat (hehe) for baseball catchers being critical in the same way. Also, catchers are constantly involved in the game in a way goalies are not. Catchers receive (or plan to receive) every single pitch; hell, they’re involved in the calling of every pitch. Comparatively, goalies can be uninvolved from gameplay for long(er) periods of time. All of this is actually a compliment to goalies – they are just too singular of a position in sports. There’s truly no one like them.

Instead, I’m focusing on the players that surreptitiously function as a lynchpin for their team. The players that can go under the general public’s radar. They’re not a flashy forward or a diving fielder. They’re often low-key and sometimes unnoticeable (which can actually be a compliment). It’s defensemen and catchers who, to me, are integral to their teams playing well because if they aren’t playing their best, everything can fall apart. I would argue that those positions need to have a deeper understanding of their respective sports than their teammates, purely as a result of the duties of their roles. Defensemen have to defend the net, obviously, but they must also support the forwards, scan for seams and weaknesses, drive play themselves, and directly contribute to offense. And catchers aren’t just backstopping for the pitcher; they’re monitoring the runners, doing what they can to manage the pitch count, and helping cover the entire area behind the baseline from first to third. You’ll hear from people in the sport and witness it firsthand when watching – when these players (dmen and catchers) are relaxed and poised, it calms everyone else down, too. When defensemen are getting beat and failing to stand up opponents, and when catchers can’t hold onto the ball and are making poor throws to second base, that’s when all hell can break loose.

Let’s talk about the more cerebral things I feel these positions deal with. Both are trying to predict and influence the future by attempting to get in their opponent’s head, guessing what they’re going to do before they do it. Catchers will call pitches they believe will beat the batter. Defensemen must anticipate an opponent’s shot and position themselves accordingly in mere seconds. Both have a vantage point from which they scan the entire scene. It’s their job to hang back; defensemen are always closest to their net and the baseball diamond literally comes to a point at the catcher. They’re looking at the bigger picture while trying to control the details to the degree they are able. They know what everyone should be doing and what should happen next. And when that doesn’t happen, they have to problem-solve immediately.

And that’s why they can’t relax. They can’t zone out. They’re always involved. This (sort of) leads me to one of the more compelling aspects I feel these positions have in common: both positions share a unique relationship with another player. Defensemen have their goalie and catchers have their pitcher. It’s these pseudo-arranged sports marriages that compel me. There’s an obligation for defensemen to take care of their goalies, just as catchers act as a direct support for their pitchers. Defensemen offer protection when opponents get too close, appearing from thin air to shove anyone who dares encroach upon their goalie. They willingly and fearlessly sacrifice themselves by stepping in front of a slapshot. I’ll do my best to bear the burden so you don’t have to. Catchers will always be on their pitcher’s side and fight for the strike call. They offer comfort, taking time to assuage their pitchers when they are showing signs of stress or jitters. It’s okay. I’m here with you. I believe in you. I would wager these pairings have more direct communication (both spoken and unspoken) between them than any other players on their teams. They’re inextricably tied together. They learn each other’s thought processes, anticipating what the other will do. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and tendencies. We need to be on the same page, us two. You and I have to think about the game differently. I’m here to protect you. I’m here to help you. I know what you’re thinking and what you’ll do before you do it. I would also argue that just as goalies are weird, pitchers are weird. They each have one job: stop puck or throw ball. So, defensemen and catchers each have their own little freak to take care of.

On a more mushy note, there’s just something about this inherent care and understanding demonstrated by defensemen and catchers that is, dare I say, attractive? Purely from a human standpoint, I appreciate that quiet steadiness so many of them display. But I would say it’s the selflessness – as much as there can be in a sport – that these players exhibit that makes them fascinating. It’s not about them. They don’t need the spotlight. Their goal is simply to offer support. To be dependable. To take on the metaphorical weight of the game and make their teammates’ lives easier; to uplift them. It can be a thankless and exhausting job, but they do it graciously and without complaint because it’s what they signed up for. There’s a groundedness and humility required to fulfill a role like that in a sport, something not everyone can lay claim to. That’s why I think defensemen and catchers, in particular, are special. 

- tocchet is very good at dealing with vancouver media in the sense that he knows how they operate. “and i know what your next question is gonna be” and “i gotta watch how i say this” moments galore

- good to see thatch is confident about his summer. Sucks that he felt so lost last summer 😢

- brock’s little huff/sly smile when asked to follow-up on his reflection of his time in vancouver. Like “i was so hoping you all would have forgotten about that but of course you didn’t”

- quinn is sooo discerning and i know that he knows what the media is trying to extract from him in terms of getting quotes for articles. You can almost see the gears working in his head for each question. 🧐

- pius is just the chillest of chill guys!!!!

- jake is so damn personable. And he always takes responsibility for his performance. i love him.

- fil making sure to fulfill his one question/one response quota lol

- typical mysie offering a very grounded, thoughtful, and honest perspective 🙂‍↕️

- conor, once again, wearing a hat that obscures the top half of his face…

- PETEY THROWN TO THE WOLVES 😫 WHERE ARE BROCK AND QUINN???? WHY DO WE NEED TO ASK PETEY A THOUSAND QUESTIONS ABOUT THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN ALREADY DISCUSSED AD NAUSEAM THIS YEAR??? “Hey petey why did you fucking suck this year? And don’t answer this wrong or we’ll twist it into another reason for the haters to feel false validation”

- kevin proving he always looks effortlessly cool. Cooler than everyone else. And he’s just wearing a fucking tshirt.

- marcus giving me hope!!!! “Everybody loves each other and wants to push each other”

- kief is such a beauty 👏 has a great head on his shoulders and you know he’s gonna come back after the summer even hungrier than before. League better watch out. Again.

- filip excited to get back to it! Hopefully he’s good to go and can really shine come next season

- i say this with love: höggy always has a bit of a fratboy look when he’s in casual clothes with a backwards cap. Plus he has this mischievous/cheeky energy about him. Like he’s about to flash those dimples and give you a wink at any moment.

- i always forget how teddy doesn’t have a latvian accent like at all when he speaks

- dak is so hard on himself 😔 i fully believe he’ll bounce back next season!

- d-petey!!! Our son!!! Repping the baby canucks 🥹

- again, drew, to me, is that kid in class who is kinda quiet and maybe you sometimes forget he’s there because he just puts his head down and works hard but he is nice to everyone and minds his business so therefore everyone likes him

- now i actually DID forget about noah. sorryyy 😬

- nils must take time to make his hair look like that and i find that both endearing and amusing