Canucks Brunch- We're Still Here

Calgary appears to have gotten fleeced, Boston got trolled and yet the sun rose this morning and there's nothing on NHL.com about the Penguins being awarded the Cup. So while some of you, as JT Bourne puts it so eloquently "slurp on Ray Shero", there's still hockey to be played, and we have our own team that has holes to fill and one rather large trade that looms ominously over our heads.

The Canucks still need help at center. They still need to get a huge chunk of the lineup they do have healthy. And as much as it kills me to say it, they need to trade one of their goaltenders. Yes, I think we're all pretty sure that they'll find a deal for Luongo as the trade deadline draws near, but last night's Iginla insanity suggests we'd be crazy to rule out the possibility of Cory Schneider getting dealt if the right offer came along. It likely will be Lu, and while many of us wish that they could go for years with this duo, the Canucks braintrust are working feverishly to hammer out some type of deal that is going to get them fair value for parting ways with one of the best goaltenders in the NHL.

And focus is gonna be the key tonight, because no matter how bad the Colorado Avalanche have been this season (and it's pretty damn bad), the Canucks need to be wary of the Avs tonight. They had the perfect opportunity for a much-needed road win, but lost 4-3 to what should have been a fairly distracted Calgary Flames team, prompting Matt Duchene to say this post game: "It’s a joke. It’s embarrassing," Duchene said. "We put ourselves being the 8-ball every night, every single night. Enough is enough. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a joke . . . They get in at 3 in the morning (today) after a loss and they want it more than us. It just can’t be that way. We played well the next 40 but we lost by a goal because we allowed two early ones." A pissed off team is a pissed off team, and they're going to offer a lot more than passive resistance tonight.

So it's Cory Schneider in goal again tonight, and there's the possibility that this is the last time Canucks fans see Roberto Luongo in blue and green. That isn't as drastic as what Flames fans feel this morning, but it's still a very hollow feeling. It's gotten to the point now where GM Mike Gillis needs to lower his asking price a touch and get a deal done. This team isn't getting anywhere in the post season the way it's currently configured, and that includes a healthy Ryan Kesler. Just getting a reasonably competent centerman would do wonders for this team, and turn them into a dark horse contender instead of a pretender.

Mini Wheats? Mini Wheats.

As if you needed another reason to hate Corey Perry, check out his novel approach to back checking last night in the Ducks 4-0 asskicking at the hands of the San Jose Sharks. Instead of skating harder to give his defenceman a hand on an odd-man rush where the Sharks were short-handed, he decided his role in the 3 on 2 should be catching up to Dan Boyle and sucker punching him. What a dick... Tough night for the Bruins, eh? They blow a late 3rd period lead. They lose in the shootout. They have Jarome Iginla swiped from them at the last second. And then their post game press conference features ANOTHER Brad Marchand 'PK Subban and the Habs are divers' rant. Awesome. I wasn't expecting this much Bruins schadenfreude until the playoffs... Oh yeah, and those damn Minnesota Wild keep postponing their regression, with their 7th straight win, as the (fingers crossed) soon to be moving Phoenix Coyotes blew a late 3rd period lead and lost in OT. Time to put them out of their misery and hopefully the perpetual rain in Seattle will wash the stank off this franchise...

KICKASS METAL TUNE OF THE DAY

Belfast thrashers Gama Bomb are back with a soon to be released new album, a new video and a free EP for you to download. Terrorscope is the first release off their 3rd album 'The Terror Tapes', and AFM Records is offering a free 4 song EP (which features 3 non-album cuts!) so if you like these guys as I do, grab it here.