last one picked

a blog about sports written by people who aren't very good at sports.

[lastonepicked-blog]

OK, clearly Luongo isn't the problem

November was supposed to put an end to the Canucks woes. After a 7-4 victory against Ovie and the Caps and a 5-1 drubbing of the Calgary Flames, the Canucks didn't bother showing up for their game against the Minnesota Wild. Backup netminder Cory Schneider was left to his own devices, stopping 40 of 45 shots, many stemming from turn-overs and shoddy defensive play from his teammates.

As much as the Luongo haters want run Bobby Lu out of Van City, there are deeper problems with the Canucks: too much collective ego, too soft, and plain old lack of effort.  The Canucks' ego problem is more apparent this year than last year. Coming off of the dream season of 2010-11, this year's Canucks look like they expect to win instead of working to win. They waltz into a game and expect things to be just like last year, where they could basically roll over any team in the league. But the other 29 teams have smartened up. They've studied tape. They know the Sedins' tricks. They saw what the Boston Bruins did to the Canucks in the Stanley Cup Final. So while the 29 other NHL teams have new strategies for beating the Canucks, the Canucks themselves haven't elevated their own game in any way.

Too soft. Sorry Canucks fans, it's true. GM Mike Gillis has modeled his team on the Detroit Red Wings, but he has overlooked significant keystones of those championship Red Wings teams: Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, and Dan Cleary, three gritty bottom-6 forwards that ensured their star forwards were never pushed around. This season the Canucks' 4th line has been a bright spot, particularly Maxime Lapierre. Overall team toughness is still a major problem. The Bruins beat the snot out of the Canucks in the Final and now all Western Conference teams have loaded up on bruisers. Let's hope Byron Bitz and Steve Pinizzotto are healthy come playoff time and actually step in and protect the top 6, something Raffi Torres, Tanner Glass, and Viktor Oreskovich didn't do.

Related to the team's ego is a clear lack of effort. The season is only a month old and the Canucks have already been shut out three times. Their defense is a mess because the d-men and forwards are simply not putting in the effort. The Cup-run was last year, boys; you have to WORK to get back there. The Canucks' laziness and unpreparedness falls on the shoulders of Alain Vigneualt and his coaching staff. The fans and media are hounding Luongo and no one is calling out Vigneualt? It's his job to have his team prepared and motivated for every game. Perhaps this soft team is a result of a soft coach? When was the last time Vigneault put the squad through a bag skate? This team needs a shit kicking and if Vigneualt won't do it Canucks-fans better be ready for an early post-season exit.

Some positives to close-out this post: as mentioned, Cory Schneider was spectacular in a losing effort and the 4th line was solid. Cody Hodgson is easily the Canucks' best forward so far. His vision is insane. Vigneualt has moved the kid up and down the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines, and Hodgson has played well consistently and the Canuck faithful are finally taking notice. He's been feeding his line-mates easy tap-ins and they can't finish. Even David Booth and Ryan Kesler look 1 or 2 moves behind Hodgson. There's no reason why Hodgson shouldn't stay with the big club for the rest of the year.

[inventfootball]

[lastonepicked-blog]

inventfootball:

“I waited many days, month, years for this moment. I return home after 8 years.. I know I disappointed many of you when I left. But I’m back for the challenge of my life. I hope to leave good memories.” - Cesc Fabregas

I'll miss Cesc.  He was a great player for Arsenal and a decent guy which is increasingly rare these days.

[lastonepicked-blog]

Haven't had a chance to write anything about the Ryan Smyth trade.  I will, I just need to decide whether it's a sign that the Oilers are moving forward or backwards.

If I was judging that on their tribute video making abilities I'd say backwards as the (attached above) Smyth homecoming video they put up on YouTube looks like a step down from something fan made.

[lastonepicked-blog]

You don't often see Arsene Wenger wearing a team top, he prefers suits or the giant puffy jackets.  Meanwhile he's talking big about being able to hang onto both Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri.

"Our position is always the same – we want to keep Cesc and I will fight as hard as I can to keep him. Samir Nasri is exactly the same. We will do everything we can to keep him," said Wenger. "I'm confident we can get both of them to stay."

[chitwoodandhobbs]

[lastonepicked-blog]

chitwoodandhobbs:

O Campo (The Field)

This wonderful series of satellite photographs of futbol fields in Brazilian cities captures the passion and sheer desperation with which other countries will go just to play the game they love. Fascinating.

The desire for playing the game has clearly surpassed and ignored the limitations of natural topography and FIFA’s laws of the game. According to the official rules and regulations you would not be allowed to play football on any of these fields. However, the careers of many of the world’s best football players began on these very same fields despite their askew angles, odd proportions, misshapen border lines and pitch markings.

/via Quipsologies

[lastonepicked-blog]

"I get the puck, I shoot it. I don't make fancy plays, I just shoot it."

Devin Setoguchi, former San Jose Shark who is now on the Minnesota Wild.  He also called Minnesota the 14th Canadian province.

[lastonepicked-blog]

I don't have anything to say about it, I just like the idea of the World Championships of American Football including Canada, Austria and Japan.

[lastonepicked-blog]

I posted this awhile ago on my other blog, but I figured I'd put it up here.  The inclusion of in-game advertising is nothing new in video games.  Indeed even the seemingly magical nature of having a current promotion beamed into a game via the internet isn't new.

It's just you really notice it when every other advert in NHL 11 is suddenly for the McRib sandwich.

[lastonepicked-blog]

What to do with Roberto Luongo

Weeks after the (literal) fires have gone out in Vancouver I've yet to see a really good postmortem of just what went wrong for the Vancouver Canucks in the final round of the NHL Playoffs.  The Bruins played a great series, and Tim Thomas was outstanding in net for them but it was a series that Vancouver could have and should have won.

The most obvious, and most repeated, explanation for the team's collapse is that goaltender Roberto Luongo is to blame.  Luongo fell apart during the games in Boston and was a shadow of himself during the climatic game seven in Vancouver. 

To hear people talk about his performance you would think that Luongo was awful in those games.  The reality is he was not, he was simply average.  The problem is average goalies don't win Stanley Cups, and Luongo is not an average goalie.  The first three games of the series in Vancouver saw him play some fantastic hockey.  He's an Olympic Gold Medal winner, having stepped up to take over Canada's goal-tending duties after Martin Brodeur fell apart during the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Hell two seasons ago the Cancuks thought so much of Luongo's importance to the team that they made him the first goalkeeper to be the captain of a professional team since 1948.  Granted that only lasted a season, but Luongo jerseys still populate the streets of Vancouver and along with Ryan Kesler and the Sedin twins he's still seen as one of the foundations of the team.

Yet during the finals the relationship between Luongo and the fans turned toxic.  Sure the Sedins weren't scoring and even Kesler who had been so vital to the team in the early rounds had dried up, the weight of the losses were piled on Luongo's shoulders and it was obvious that he was under strain.

The Canucks defensive collapse was not all his fault, but goalies take an unfair amount of the blame when things go wrong.  When compared to Boston's Tim Thomas, who was on a once-in-a-lifetime hot streak and playing behind a defense that was working together well, Canucks fans found Luongo wanting.

With the core of the Canucks team back next year, including the recently resigned Kevin Bieksa, there's no doubt that the team are Cup challengers again.  Yet with people calling for backup netminder Cory Schneider to be made starting goalie, the question is will Luongo be part of that team?

The fact is that Schneider might be ready to be a starting goalie somewhere in the NHL, but he's not better than Roberto Luongo.  Trading Luongo means losing more games during the regular season, which means that the Canucks likely won't be challenging for the President's Trophy this year.  Yet it's unlikely that Schneider will stay a backup much longer, and so the Canucks may be losing one or the other.

The question is who will want Luongo and his $5.3 million dollar contract which eats up a lot of salary cap space for most teams?  Chris Sadek of The Bleacher Report suggests the Edmonton Oilers, who have lots of cap space since they're a very young team, and could use a star in net.

That's as good a theory as I've seen, but my feeling is that he'll be playing in Vancouver this coming season.  Which I think if the fans are able to get it through their heads that one man didn't lose them the Cup, and instead it was the fault of an entire team that collapsed under the expectations of a Cup mad city, then things should go alright.

If Vancouver fans can't move past the final round against Boston, and keep jumping on Luongo's back each time he makes a mistake, then things could get ugly.

[americanmccarver]

It’s easy to joke that the only thing Americans care less about than soccer (translation for our non-U.S. readers: “the sport called ‘football’ that’s being ruined by Sepp Blatter, rather than the one being ruined by Roger Goodell”) is soccer when it’s played by women. Then again, the...

[lastonepicked-blog]

The answers lead to the essence of why fans watch sports. Do we want to bear witness to and be inspired by the fastest, strongest and most skilled of our species pushing the limits of physical achievement? Or do we just need the intellectual diversion of an organized activity with easily measured outcomes that is purely engrossing but entirely ephemeral? Do our sports teams satisfy the need for community that has disappeared from many other aspects of modern life?

Matt Rennie, "Imagining a world without pro sports"

[lastonepicked-blog]

I'm going to be honest, I'm excited that the Winnipeg Jets are back if only because they were always an easy team to beat.

Now if we can just get rid of the Calgary Flames.

[lastonepicked-blog]

I'm very good so many automated porn robots have been enjoying this blog so far.

- Staff

[lastonepicked-blog]

Mostly known for being the counter weight to western journalism in the Middle East Al Jazeera's English language service actually does sports reporting.  Here on the program Inside Story they've got a good look at corruption and match fixing in world soccer.

Granted it's a bit dry, and very English.

[lastonepicked-blog]

More Doctor Who football stuff, this a parody of an English football program covering him playing football in the episode "The Lodger".

[lastonepicked-blog]

The news of United's bid may trigger counter-offers from Manchester City, Internazionale and Chelsea, who have monitored Nasri's potential availability and are weighing up whether to turn their interest into something more concrete.

£20 is a lot of money for a player who had five good months and then vanished for the second half of the season last year.  Also is Samir Nasri is worth that much how much is Cesc really worth?

(A good bit more I'd say).

[lastonepicked-blog]

The Edmonton Oilers announced today they will be participating in the Vancouver Canucks Young Stars Tournament, a round robin tournament, featuring prospects from the Oilers, Calgary Flames, Winnipeg Jets, San Jose Sharks and Vancouver Canucks. The tournament will be held in Penticton, British Columbia from September 11-15, 2011.

More information on the Oilers official site.