Cam, Lubo and Fandom

I’m running out of ways to say that the Ducks can’t afford to lose this game tonight In Colorado.  Before Wednesday’s game I said that the Ducks need to win 10 of their last 16 to have a legitimate chance of making the playoffs; that comes out to roughly a two-to-one win/loss ratio.  Since that stretch of five losses in a row, the Ducks have actually been above that pace going 4-1, with the only loss coming at the hands of the top team in the league.  The Avs have gone 1-7-2 in their last ten.  Colorado is a team that the Ducks should beat, which can be scary at times.  This is one of the games that the Ducks need to win in order to keep pace until they play a direct opponent, Phoenix on Sunday.  The Kings are in Columbus tonight and Dallas hosts Minnesota in the other two games of note for the Western Conference playoff race.

I didn’t get around to mentioning it yesterday, but Cam Fowler has had a rough go of it in the last two games.  He was hung out to dry on the first goal Sunday against Vancouver, his turnover in the first minute of the second period against Vancouver gave the Canucks a dominant position to play from, and he way overplayed the puck to give the Rangers an early lead Wednesday.  Dan Ellis has been solid, but with Hiller out, the Ducks need their defense to step up a little bit more and Lubomir Visnovski has been leading that charge.

Lubo is absolutely on fire right now offensively with five goals and seven points in his last three games,  and Randy Carlyle has clearly instructed him to shoot whenever possible because pucks are just going in for him right now.  In fact he’s had a great season overall, as of this morning he’s behind only Kieth Yandle of the Phoenix Coyotes in scoring by a defenseman with 54 points and tied for third in the league with 14 goals from the blueline.  Matt Vevoda of Anaheimducks.com wrote a nice story on Lubo yesterday, and as such many of the comments circled around his underratedness and the idea that he should be considered for the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman.

In his notes from practice yesterday, Eric Stephens wrote that Randy Carlyle blamed the media for not lauding Lubo as a Norris candidate as he should be.  Stephens also  chose a quote from Bobby Ryan saying that Lubo isn’t in the Norris conversation as much as he should be because he “plays in a market that doesn’t support it like other teams do.”  The fact that this comment wasn’t seen as a slight ot the fans and didn’t create a firestorm of criticism supports that point, however it also speaks to the reasonable nature of a fan base that isn’t blindly loyal and fanatically reactionary, we’ve seen enough of that this week (Montreal I’m looking at you). 

There is a give and take to either extreme type of fan base.  Anaheim is not the extreme by the way, *cough* *cough* Atlanta *cough* but we’re toward the low end of the spectrum.  Montreal is a Mecca of hockey, the atmosphere at the Bell Centre has to be the best in the world, and the fans can be great, speaking of the ovation that Saku Koivu got upon his return, not to mention when he came back from cancer in 2002. 

However, the Montreal media and fans can also be blood sucking psychopaths.  Booing Carey Price in the first period of the pre-season this year was simply outrageous, and the hysteria over the Chara/Pacioretty hit is a joke.  The police caving to pressure from the fans to investigate the hit in order to right the perceived wrong committed by Mike Murphy and Hockey Ops for letting Chara off without a suspension is mind boggling.  There is a place for police investigation into on ice incidents, (e.g. Bertuzzi, McSorely, Chris Simon, etc. and even some of those are arguable) but this was miles from crossing that line. 

To make a long story short (too late) it would be nice to get some more national recognition, but it can be a double edged sword.

Hard to Watch

It turns out that what we thought was just a crazy game where goals were falling into the laps of just about everyone on the ice was actually the beginning of a severe problem for the Ducks. Before Wednesday, the Ducks had been trucking along at a steady pace for a month and a half, despite having their captain out and later a mysterious injury to All-Star goalie/defensive savior. They hadn’t lost back to back games from Dec. 26 through Feb. 13. Now, they have given up 21 goals in their last three games and, needless to say, have lost all three.

In the past week the Ducks have fallen from fourth in the conference with a chance to take over the lead of the division if they could have beaten Washington to tenth in the West and (tied for) last in the Pacific.

I wanted to log on and vent a little about some of the atrocious officiating in the past two games, but the Ducks haven’t given me a leg to stand on. There were a few calls in the Minnesota game on Friday that could have helped the Ducks, and Cam Fowler’s goal would have changed the face of the St. Louis game Saturday had it not been absolutely stolen from him, but the Ducks should have never been in those situations to begin with.

The real turning point of the St. Louis game was two goals in seven seconds. It only evened the score, and it would be tied again once after that, but the Blues went on to score seven of the next eight goals in the game. When the crowd is chanting “We Want Ten!” you really have no right to complain about the officiating, no matter how much of a travashamockery it is.

The fact of the matter is that Curtis McElhinney has been awful since Jonas Hiller went back on IR for fatigue and lightheadedness. Lubomir Visnovski played his worst game as a Duck on Saturday against St. Louis. Teemu Selanne has become a turnover machine, although he isn’t alone. The power play is only one for its last 15 attempts, and they’ve only killed five of their last 11 penalties. This slide is becoming dangerously reminiscent of the five game losing streak after the Olympics last year that effectively eliminated the Ducks from the playoff race.

Speaking of the Olympics, today is the 31st anniversary of the greatest upset in the history of sports: The Miracle on Ice. So after a dour post and with things looking bad for the Ducks right now on the eve of an enormous rivalry game against the Kings, I leave you with a little inspiration.

Voros to Toronto; Ducks Continue to Carry Nine D-Men

Bob Murray and Brian Burke are at it again. Aaron Voros is the newest former Duck to don the Maple Leaf. There really isn’t much to say about this trade, as Voros only played 12 games as a Duck, due to a combination of injuries and healthy scratches, not to mention he was a fourth liner at best on a team claiming it wants to roll three scoring lines.

All in all, it’s a fine trade for everyone. Voros will likely get back into the NHL after having been demoted to Syracuse Wednesday; Toronto gets a truculent body to stick in their lineup, and the Ducks get a seventh round draft pick that they can hope turns into Henrik Zetterberg.

Yesterday I said that the Ducks would have to make a move before the deadline, but this wasn’t the one I was thinking of. Dumping a forward that was already in Syracuse does nothing to address the glut of defensemen that the Ducks have on hand at the moment. The Ducks still have nine defensemen on the roster and have been dressing seven per game since Francois Beauchamin came aboard.

Clearly, Lubo Visnovski, Toni Lydman, Cam Fowler and Beauch aren’t going anywhere. That leaves the hammer to fall on free agent disappointment Andy Sutton , Luca Sbisa — the remaining piece of the Pronger trade — penalty killer and shot blocker extraordinaire Andreas Lilja, Sheldon Brookbank — the only defenseman left from last season’s roster — or Fowler’s former mentor and frequent healthy scratch Paul Mara.

In my mind Brookbank and/or Mara has to go. They have each played only one game since December 18, which simultaneously makes them expendable and very difficult to move.

Sutton would be the next least valuable to the Ducks as of this moment, but he comes with a bit of a big ticket, $2.1 million cap hit with a year left on his contract. And as Eric Stephens pointed out the Beauchamin trade may have been an admission that Sutton hasn’t panned out the way Murray had hoped. One would have to think that trading Sutton away after acquiring Beauch would be more palatable to Murray and the Samuelis than sticking $2 million in the press box for the rest of the season.

Lilja and Sbisa are definitely the two most attractive assets (that may be had) to other teams, but with the Ducks pushing for a solid playoff run, signaled by the Beauchamin deal, any trade involving one of those two would have to bring in a juicy return, and hopefully come from an Eastern Conference team (not Toronto).

Murray could burry Mara, Brookbank or Sbisa (due to his age) in Syracuse and leave the option of bringing one of them up as needed for say an injury, but they can’t keep all these blue liners around forever. Can they?