Courtesy of Canucks.com:

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This will be the Game Preview Post. You can put your predictions in the comments section. With MayRay playing for sure against the Preds, I can finally publish this post. It has been in draft for over a week and took a long time to put together.

Mason Raymond. A rock star of sorts. The ladies gasp at this looks. His boyish charm. He can dazzle with his talent and blazing speed. He is a workhorse. He is gritty despite his smaller stature. Ballsy. Even so, he struggled last season after a 25-goal, 53 point performance in 82 games 2 seasons ago. We have not seen MayRay since Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals after he was piledriven into the boards by Johnny Boychuk, suffering a broken vertebrae. Now, the gritty speedster is ready to return to the Canucks' lineup and you know what? I am excited about it. Raymond has a lot

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Canucks.com has a video up of it today. Damn. I am getting old. I was only 17 years old when Pavel Bure played his first game in the NHL. I remember the hype. I remember the show he put on in that first game. I remember so many of his goals and plays. I'll never forget his performance in the 1994 Playoffs, including the "mother of all elbows" on Dallas Stars' Shane Churla. I'll never forget the ugly circumstances under which he left Vancouver either. His number is heading to the rafters one of these days. If you are too young to remember Bure...you missed out on a "rock star". The video below is a pretty sweet tribute by Squire Barnes. Enjoy!

Beyond Cory Schneider's awesomeness and Hammer's first goal of the season, my fave moment of the 5-1 loss to Minny was this:

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I really enjoyed the After Hours segment with Booth. He comes across as a sincere and fun guy. Somebody you'd love to go for a few drinks with and shoot the shit. His faith completely caught me off guard, but I like it because several other Canucks players are christians as well. So you know he'll fit in in the locker room.

 I do want to throw an opinion in though after watching last nights thriller against the Capitals: He loves to shoot the puck from everywhere. Almost too much to the point where he's not making a passing play. I would love to see him take his strength and shot and play with the Sedins. The curiosity is killing me.

Here's the complete footage of After Hours in case you missed it or wanted to watch it again:

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Isn't it great having a 4th line that can actually generate some offence? So it was great to see a member of our new crash and bang line score his first NHL goal tonight. 23 year-old Dale Weise.

"You know what, it was top shelf, so I'll take it," joked Weise. "If anyone asks, I'll say it was top shelf, I'm happy with that."

The kid has a sense of humor AND a decent set of hands that's for sure. His tip-in goal tonight looked genius. Or was it lucky? Who cares? Take another look at it:

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Huge props to sjam99 for continually putting out finely-tuned motivating Canucks videos. Check out his work on YouTube here. And here is his latest offering:

Hey maybe I'm just getting older...but imagine that video with a Metallica-Battery soundtrack? Maybe Slayer-War Ensemble? Just saying. Are you ready for another kick ass Canucks season? It's coming...soon.

OK, this will be the last top 10 that I'll do as there is too much going on with the preseason. Raffi Torres created some controversy by cranking Jordan Eberle just before the season ended. He would return in Round 1 of the playoffs and create more...controversy, as you'll see on the list. Another Canuck player (a most excellent defenceman for that matter) would create more Canuck hate-ons as well.

This isn't called the biggest and baddest hits for nothing. Not all of these hits were considered clean. Whatever. This is all about contact. Some guys spit chicklets. Some got right back up. Some saw a light at the end of the tunnel or had dreams of Orcas and mad Mexicans. The Playoffs were nasty. Enjoy!

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