Music: {allcanada} Rats! Canucks' bad boys serve crucial role on a winning team

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

{allcanada} Rats! Canucks' bad boys serve crucial role on a winning team

It seems like there's an awful lot of talk about the Vancouver Canucks being easy to hate this year.

Maybe it's because I've been watching hockey my entire life, but it seems like there's not nearly enough talk about that being a good thing.

"Pests" — those vile, contemptible few who would slash the lollipop out of an infant's hand for nothing but sheer fun — are able to shift their opponent's focus from the game to something far less important. They're able to make guys check over their shoulder everywhere they go, seethe when they're on the bench and just generally alter the way they play the game.

You don't have to like it, but acting like the Canucks having a few of these guys makes a team less deserving of a title is silly.

Like everyone else in hockey, I hated playing against rats. I once played a best-of-seven series against one who target one area —my left calf/hamstring area — and whacked it every time we were within range of each other. At one point, after taking about six in a row in the same spot (I was in front of the net on the power play, which is apparently a penalty-free zone), I realized I didn't want to go over to his area of the ice. He had accomplished his goal.

Vancouver's bad boys seem to be trying to accomplish something similar. At the very least, they've successfully pulled their opponent's focus to them instead of the action enough to have an effect on the series. Mark Recchi and Milan Lucic offering their fingers up to be bitten shows how much those pests have climbed inside their heads.

The refs, for their part, know exactly what's going on with Alex Burrows and Maxim Lapierre (I'd be willing to bet Burrows hates being lumped in with Lappy, who is a next-level rat). They're no longer effective at drawing penalties, as the stripes have figured them out like a beginner's level Sudoku with the answer page open. The refs know that they can't trust how they react to contact.

But that's not bad news for those two. They don't have to be drawing penalties to be effective. What they do need is to become part of the conversation on the Boston bench. If the Bruins are smart, the collective talk would be about the Stanley Cup. They have to find a way to forget the fact that some pest of a player slashed their ankle a few games ago.

All the conversation surrounding those guys has been cloaked in a tone of disrespect, which might be somewhat deserved, but overlooks their contributions.

When my dad (who played for the New York Islanders) discusses facing teams in the 1970s and '80s, he mentions certain names that make him irate to this day, mostly from the Philadelphia Flyers and Bruins. And both those teams won Stanley Cups during his era (or just before, in Boston's case). Those teams were peppered with rats, he explains, but at the time, it was at least OK to concede that they were valued.

Canucks general manager Mike Gillis deserves credit for watching the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup last year and acknowledging the style of a guy who helped them beat his team: David Bolland. He played the role of talented rat, drove his superstars nuts and scored some big goals. As a response, he brought in Lapierre, who has done the same thing, including scoring the winning goal in Game 5.

If the Canucks win the Stanley Cup Wednesday night, all the credit in the world will go to their bigger-name players, but it can't be overlooked that having a few pests in the lineup played a sizeable role in their rise to the top.