No Jumping Off The Bandwagon Here

You can complain all you want about the calls or non-calls on Wednesday night, but when it all comes down to it, if the Canucks hadn’t played as poorly as they did, then the officials wouldn’t have come into play at all.

The Canucks defense was completely ineffective, failing to clear the rebounds that Roberto Luongo had trouble with, which was far too many.  Seeing as how that’s not his usual style, though, I don’t think that it’s going to be much of a concern for game 4 tonight.

Stupid penalties that WERE called, though, are a different matter.  Alex Burrows probably had a sinking feeling as he was skating towards the box after getting into a shoving match for no good reason. 

The power play was also a problem, as the Canucks had trouble maintaining possession of the puck when they had the man advantage.  They’d get the puck over the line, make a pass, lose the puck, and wind up chasing it back to their own end of the ice.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

They’re going to have to come up with a better effort tonight, and I think that they will.  Both teams have had their horrible nights (game 1 in the Hawks’ case) so tonight can live up to the billing that this series has had all along. 

Which will make for a very entertaining night indeed.