I actually hate that kind of talk. It's like the other team has a bear and you blame the guy who woke up the bear. When Ferland smashed us in our last playoff series against the Flames who do you blame? Bieksa? Whenever we lose a playoff series it's almost always about how the Canucks have no answer for the other team's speed and size.
Roussel had a bad series and it has little to do with him "waking up" Reaves. At the end of the day the job of an agitator is to draw penalties and get his opponent off his game. He didn't accomplish that and ended up getting penalized. When it works it has value. When it doesn't, you have fans saying he's embarrassed for him. We heard the same things with Burrows and Cooke before him.
I don't think any Canucks was to blame for the Flames series. Ferland was allowed to charge our D without penalty, and it worked since our D was too slow to move the puck. It wasn't a case of somebody "woke up the bear."
Agitators has to walk a fine line. If you do your job right, it throws the other team off their game and they take penalties trying to go after you. If you don't do it right, the momentum goes the other way. Reaves was pretty invisible the rest of the playoff, and is generally a fairly average 4th liner. However against us, he had a fairly big impact. Just my opinion but had AR not chirp every Knights then runs away when Reaves skates by, I really doubt we'll notice Reaves much at all.
Like you said, when his antics work, it definitely has value. The problem is his antics hasn't work for a long time now, and it is just a distraction out there. To me it is similar to the situation in Calgary with Tkachuk being an idiot out there but it doesn't really help the team wins.
I was never embarrassed for Burrows. I was for Cooke but only because he is such a dirty player, I don't like the way he goes out and try to severely hurt others with dirty plays.
