a few stray thoughts:
that dorsett - horvat - burrows line was a good fourth line. good on the forecheck, decently strong on the boards, did its job nicely. of course, it is a complete waste of horvat but i'm thinking... one day that's what you want from gaunce, but he's not yet ready to carry dorsett, who had always and will always need to be carried, and burrows, who well i'm holding out hope that he just needs to play himself into midseason form but i may just be kidding myself. for now, if i were the coach i would go dorsett - sutter - burrows, which is an almost equally high end fourth line and can handle third line minutes (in that up and down fourth line role, there isn't a whole lot bo can do that sutter can't do; in a second line role there are things, like pass well, that bo can do that sutter can't).
that would allow willie to put together a third line of gaunce - jake - something that he could shelter with essentially fourth line minutes.
of course, that deviates from the 1-2-3-4 strategy, where lines 2-4 are equal and therefore equally get outplayed, but what do i know? i didn't graduate from gudger college.
first line looked like half-eaten dog food. how could they be so reportedly competitive at the world cup (i didn't watch it) and so bad against a garbage flames team with monahan at half speed? are they trying to get willie fired? JARVIS-LIDSTER 2017
but man oh man, what a boring game. this may be an all-time low point of the vancouver-calgary rivalry, even worse than the late 90s, post-fleury and post-bure. i literally slept through the third period, waking up briefly when i heard the goal, then after watching the highlight almost immediately falling asleep again until the shootout.
but here's a flashback to a simpler, happier, most exciting time. the last time the canucks faced off against a young tkachuk, beating the jets in back-to-back smythe semi-finals. both series are on youtube and are awesome: the canucks coming back from 3-1 in '92 and bure ending tabaracci's seemingly-promising career, phil housley hearing footsteps and coughing up the puck like he was sopel, selanne in '93 getting eaten alive by our big d (dana murzyn's one shining moment), and my absolute favourite moment of those series, @14:30 of the video below:
