Blogathon 2009 – Nucks Misconduct

Post #37 of #49 – Over the next 24 hours I will be raising funds for the Union Gospel Mission during Blogathon 2009 by writing a blog post every 30 minutes. Please consider donating to my cause to keep my going until 6am PT July 26th.

The following guest post was contributed by Sean Zandberg of Nucks Misconduct

I have been blogging about the Vancouver Canucks and the NHL since June 2004. The reason why I started putting thoughts and rants to keyboard in the first place was because of a close friend of mine nicknamed Temujin who ran a political blog called West Coast Chaos, Alanah McGinley (formerly of Vancouver Canucks Op Ed now of Canucks And Beyond fame, and a couple of her Crazy Canuck friends who I also in turn followed: John and Rebecca Bollwitt.

It’s amazing how much we have evolved since then. It just goes to show that if you start a site and you want to be successful you have to stick with it and work hard at it.

So I tip my hat to the four of you for the inspiration.

Since I write about the Canucks, and now have the mic, so to speak, allow me to provide a quick Canucks rant.

After a heartbreaking loss to the Blackhawks in round 2 of the playoffs, the moves Mike Gillis has made (or hasn’t) give Canucks fans reasons to be both excited and cautious at the same time.

While he re-signed the Sedins at a higher price (which was a necessity to keep them of course), he lost a lot of cap space to play around with. Mattias Ohlund walked into the free agency horizon and was not replaced by any rumored big defenceman on the market. Magnificent Mike signed what is believed to be a top 6 winger in Mikael Samuelsson (who has played with the Sedins in tournaments before), but I hear rumblings from Red Wings fans that he is inconsistent. Here’s hoping he excels in an increased role.

On a more positive note, Vancouver has an abundance of forwards with Cody Hodgson being labeled a “lock” to make the team, and a guy like Michael Grabner knocking at the door. Kyle Wellwood’s arbitration case will be settled on Tuesday and suddenly we’ll have too many forwards. That’s a good problem to have. Expect Gillis to wait for a while for teams to become financially strapped when signing their own free agents and then making a deal most likely for a defenceman.

I have to say that I am excited to see how Kevin Bieksa and Alex Edler perform with their bigger roles. They could and should have career years.

When the puck drops in October we’ll have most of the core in tact plus some injection of youth on the team. It’s going to be a great year. Until then, enjoy your summer!