ASG, Luongo and the World Juniors

All Star Snub
A lot of people have written about what a joke the all-star game has become already, but with the Canucks being off today I wanted to add in some of my own comments. As a Canucks fan I was pretty disappointed that Daniel Sedin (41 points through 41 games when the rosters were announced) was left off the roster. What does Daniel need to do to show that he is an elite player in this league? Not only is he averaging a point a game, but he is sixth in western conference scoring. Sounds like an all-star to me. And Daniel wasn’t the only deserving player to be left off the team. Patrick Marleau (42 points in 39 games, +15) is another glaring snub in the all-star selection process. There are others of course but i simply can’t name them all.

You see the NHL felt that it needed to have representatives from all of its teams at the all-star game so instead of the game representing the best players in the league so far during the season you get players who are playing ok on bad teams. I’m sure Keith Tkachuk and Mike Modano are all-stars if I somehow flashed back to 2002. The idea of selecting a player from every team seems absolutely absurd when there are barely more spots on the team to fill than there are teams in a conference. The idea of selecting at least one player from every team was a policy that even MLB was smart enough to scrap. Although they still award home field advantage to the winner of the all-star game so I can’t praise them too much.

Something also must be done about letting the fans voting in the starting lineup. I’m well aware that the all-star game is for the fans, but I am disappointed that people who found a loophole in the voting process could stuff the ballot for their favourite players. Although this would bother me a lot less if the NHL was competent enough to select the most deserving reserves. Ever since the vote for Rory campaign took off the NHL all-star game has become more and more of a joke and like the Rory movement, the NHL will likely shrug this one off too.

Luongo Making Progress
As a Canucks fan I was happy to hear that Roberto Luongo was back in net taking shots yesterday as he traveled with the team to Edmonton. Luongo took controlled shots from his teammates and did not push himself too hard. Its solid progress and it looks as if the Canucks captain should be back between the pipes soon after the all-star break. If Jason LaBarbera keeps playing the way that he is then there is certainly no need for Luongo to rush himself back into the net. Not that he was going to anyway.

And no I did not forget that Roberto Luongo was named to the all-star team during my rant of the selection process. As much as I love Luongo I can’t understand how a guy who has missed more than a month of the season can be named on the Western Conferences all-star goaltenders. I would assume Steve Mason will be replacing him on the roster when the announcement that he won’t play due to injury comes out.

Cody Hodgson at the World Juniors
The World Juniors have been over for a few days now but I wanted to add how much I enjoyed watching Cody Hodgson during the tournament. Hodgson looked to me like he will no doubt be joining the Canucks next season. He did pretty much everything that Canada and Pat Quinn could have asked from him. He ran the power and piled up the assits on John Tavares’ goals, he scored the back breaker in the gold medal game to put Canada up 3-0 and he was their most reliable forward on defence and was counted on to kill penalties.

I didn’t have a problem with John Tavares being named MVP of the tournament but it would have been nice to see Hodgson be named one of the top three players on Canada for the tournament. Jordan Eberle and John Tavares were well deserving, but I thought the leading scorer in the tournament could have taken a spot instead of PK Subban. I have nothing but love for PK though and Habs fans will love him when he’s ready to make the jump to the NHL. The award would have been nice but Hodgson’s play still spoke for itself on the ice

Nikita Filatov
Finally I want to say how impressed I was with Nikita Filatov during the tournament. He seemed to win games on his own for Russia and in my opinion he really raised his play during the quater final and bronze medal game. It must have been tough for him to play so well during the bronze medal game after Russia was defeated by a miracle goal by Eberle in the Semis.

His great play was not unnoticed by the Blue Jackets who recalled him after the tournament. He scored 1 goal in 4 games during October with the Blue Jackets.