Canucks’ teachable moments from Saturday’s Flames rumble (with video)

Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun columnist 



VANCOUVER — Any week that features a 9-1 loss, a game-opening line brawl that sees eight players ejected, Tom Sestito on Keith Olbermann's U.S. television radar and a shootout win for the Vancouver Canucks must have some teachable moments.

And since the Canucks had never had a week like that until now, we figured we better learn what we can:

1. Be careful around Sestito, the Canucks' heavyweight, but under no circumstances should you mess with his kid sister Victoria, the 13-year-old who went toe-to-toe on Twitter with Keith Olbermann after the ESPN commentator called her brother the worst person in sports.

2. Regrettably, worst person in sports is a pretty big field, but still far smaller than the good-people-in-sports category.

3. Next time the Canucks need a right-handed shot for a key faceoff and Ryan Kesler is unavailable, defenceman Kevin Bieksa is their guy. At the start of Saturday's rumble, Calgary Flames hitman Kevin Westgarth had one thing on his mind. So did Bieksa — winning the faceoff against Westgarth.

4. Nothing — and I mean nothing — good happens for the home team's coach at the visiting team's dressing room between periods.

5. John Tortorella storming the Flames' fortress, like a ninja in a Quintin Tarantino kung-fu flick, has endeared him to Canucks players and brought them closer.

6. But it also has done the Canucks no good with their reputation as hockey's most hated team, at National Hockey League headquarters and with referees who have been accused some nights of adjudicating Vancouver harshly since the Alex Burrows-Stephan Auger incident in 2010.

7. It allows any Canuck player to say, “yeah, but” the next time Tortorella pleads for discipline.

8. Flames coach Bob Hartley hid behind his team after initiating the brawl by having Westgarth, a winger, take the opening faceoff so he was in position to attack Canuck minor-league call-up Kellan Lain, which is what incensed Tortorella.

9. At 6-6 and 220 pounds, Lain is nearly a foot taller than the last Canuck prospect named Kellan (Tochkin) and can handle himself physically.

10. One guy who should be outraged is Flames forward Blair Jones, the natural centre whom Hartley deployed against tough Canuck winger Dale Weise, leading to Jones' third fight in 125 regular-season NHL games.

11. Since it was obvious that Sestito and Flames heavyweight Brian McGrattan would fight on the opening faceoff, it should have been obvious also to the eight other skaters on the ice that they would get game misconducts if they chose to fight.

12. I was ready to blame the players, more than the coaches, for what happened until Canucks assistant coach Mike Sullivan said this on Monday: “I think sometimes players get put in difficult circumstances, and it's easy for all the rest of us to be critical. When you're in the heat of the battle, things happen. And it's easy after the fact to criticize why certain people did certain things and acted a certain way or made certain decisions. I think it's an unfair question to even go down that road and suggest players were to blame.”

13. Canuck Jason Garrison chose to fight for just the second time in his NHL career and beat Flames defenceman Chris Butler, who also doubled his career fights total. Garrison is the modern version of former Canuck Dave Babych — a mountain-man of a player so naturally big and powerful he can squash people if he goes Incredible Hulk.

14. Olbermann could have showed some magnanimity when Sestito, Tom not Victoria, tweeted him after Saturday's game: “Thank God I made it past the 2 second mark (or) I could have a repeat of the worst person in sports in the same week.” But instead, Olbermann responded with a seemingly mean-spirited: “Nah, that was your American TV time for the decade.”

15. The surprising thing about the end of Henrik Sedin's ironman streak is that it is happening Tuesday in Edmonton instead of Saturday against the Flames after the Canucks captain suffered a rib injury when cross-checked by Phoenix Coyotes Martin Hanzal last Thursday. Anyone who has had a rib injury knows breathing can be an ordeal, let alone playing in the NHL, and it was clear Sedin was at three-quarter speed and half-strength against the Flames before Tortorella ordered him to stand down for the third period.

16. Sedin would never put himself ahead of his team and was playing not to prolong his 10-year-old perfect attendance record in NHL games but because he was desperate to help the Canucks, who had one win in nine games.

17. Henrik and Daniel Sedin will never get the full acknowledgment they merit for their toughness, fortitude and unselfishness. Actually, I already knew this.

18. The NHL has an limitless capacity to both confuse and disappoint with its decisions on supplementary discipline, such as the one Friday not to suspend repeat-offender Hanzal for cross-checking David Booth in the face and one three weeks earlier to excuse McGrattan for a high hit that knocked out Canuck defenceman Andrew Alberts, who has not put on skates since.

19. Saturday's mayhem probably happens regardless, due to Hartley and Tortorella's lineup decisions, but a suspension to McGrattan for injuring Alberts would have lowered the temperature between the teams.

20. Tortorella told each Canuck skater who started against the Flames that he was not sending them out to fight.

21. By the week — but not yet consistently for a full week — Zack Kassian looks more and more capable of making an impact in the NHL.

22. CBC chose the wrong night Saturday not to position an analyst between the benches.

23. McGrattan is not only hard on the opposition, but hard on his own team as the surveillance camera outside the Flames' dressing room showed the winger face-wash his own assistant coach when Clint Malarchuk tried to answer Tortorella's challenge.

24. From the same footage: if you stack most of an NHL team in a narrow hallway behind a barricade of bickering humans, security and training staff, the players will shuffle side to side and poke their heads up to try to see what is happening and will resemble, in white uniforms trimmed in red, a flock of chickens.

25. But there are few chickens in the NHL.



