Most of the time, we use the “Breakdowning” feature to unpack busy goals. Back in December, for instance, we broke down two Sedin goals versus the Minnesota Wild. Both featured a great deal of movement and, eventually, a tiny defensive error on which the twins were able to capitalize. We also looked at a powerplay goal versus the Toronto Maple Leafs. In it, the Leafs’ penalty-kill unit made an error, and the Canucks were able to pull off a complex scoring play as a result.

Alex Edler’s end-to-end rush Saturday versus the Columbus Blue Jackets was hardly complex. Basically, the Swedish blueliner just skated straight up the middle of the ice.

And no one stopped him. If you’re wondering how this goal happened, let me make it very clear: typically, a skater isn’t allowed to do that. But Edler was, and thus we break down exactly what allowed Alex Edler to go coast-to-coast like Space Ghost on the Columbus penalty kill.

Mason Raymond has been a target for criticism for the vast majority of the season and it’s easy to understand why. The speedy winger has just 8 goals and 8 assists in 46 games and has been noticeably prone to losing his edge and falling to the ice. He’s survived a broken back, but it’s unknown if he’ll survive the displeasure of Vancouver hockey fans.
His recent promotion to the first line with the Sedins made sense on closer inspection, but that didn’t stop Canucks fans from freaking right out and calling for Vigneault’s head. Fortunately, the Canucks organization installed a statue of Roger Neilson in front of Rogers Arena and not a guillotine, or things could have gotten ugly.

I’ve been quick to defend Mason Raymond this season, pointing out that his deficiencies frequently mask his proficiencies. After all, Raymond was often criticized last season for his lack of production, but his underlying numbers were still strong, indicating that he was still a useful player whose efforts were under-appreciated. It was easy enough for me to assume that the same was the case this year, that Raymond’s lack of offensive production was making him an easy, and undeserved, target of criticism.

I was wrong.

Chris Higgins was the guest on Hockey Night in Canada After Hours Saturday, marking the third consecutive week that a Canuck has occupied the chair to Scott Oake’s right. March has already given us interviews with Dan Hamhuis and Kevin Bieksa, and Higgins’s turn in Oake’s awkward hot seat falls somewhere between the two, neither as wacky as Bieksa’s mug-and-quip-fest, nor as dry as the Hamhuis interview.

For the most part, the talk covers ground with which the majority of Canuck fans should already be familiar: Higgins’s service family, which includes his police officer brother and his firefighter father, the American Express line being good, and Higgins’s staph infection and subsequent struggles last January. But do not dismay, Canuck fans, because if there’s one thing that sets 10 minutes with Scott Oake apart from your standard hockey interview, it’s that Oake asks the questions you’re typically not supposed to ask. In this case, that means Higgins’s After Hours clip features a solid five minutes on his crazy abs.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are like Dan from Dan in Real Life (or any other advice columnist from the movies): they can help everyone but themselves. Are your superstars struggling to score? Has it been awhile since your best defenceman wowed everyone? Has your team looked listless for weeks? Well, then you’re in luck, because the Blue Jackets are in town to get your game back on track. They’ll encourage you, set you up to succeed, and even play alongside you, gosh darn it — they want you to do well.

Columbus was exactly what Vancouver needed Saturday night: a beatable opponent. Granted, the Canucks still weren’t perfect, but if there’s one thing you don’t have to be to beat the Blue Jackets, it’s perfect. In the end, the secret to beating Columbus is simply to “score one more goal than them,” as Kevin Bieksa so succinctly put it in the postgame scrum. And that’s what the Canucks did. I watched this game.

The Canucks’ goaltending situation is suddenly up in the air, with both netminders seemingly capable of taking the number one job (or just one, if you listen to Vancouver’s massive contingent of Luongo-haters). But, if there’s one element where Cory Schneider’s got Roberto Luongo beat without question, it’s in media dealings. Schneider’s absurdly good at providing quotes that can’t be misinterpreted, meaning there’s nothing for the media to blow out of proportion — meaning there’s nothing over which PITB can call out the media for blowing out of proportion.

It’s no fun for anybody, really.

Schneider’s so good at downplaying controversy that no one even batted an eye when he effectively said today that he hoped to take Roberto Luongo’s job.

Drance Numbers is the silly research wing of PITB. While Messrs. Wagner and Mooney blog nationally and solve mysteries, Drance Numbers will look into the minutiae of quantifiable NHL data and bore you with it every Friday. Today, Drance defines some terms.

Spitballin’ (or Super Pass It To Bulis: All In, if you love adventurous acronymizing) is a feature that allows us to touch on a multitude of things really fast, because in the world of hockey, there are always lots of things to find and colour. Here are a few quick topics.

Presented without comment: an interview with Harrison Mooney, associate editor at Puck Daddy and (apparently sole) editor and creator of Pass it to Bulis.

In case you haven’t noticed, Vancouver fans and media can be a fickle bunch. The Canucks’ struggles over the last several weeks have everyone on edge, looking for the slightest provocation to heap scorn and ridicule on the boys in blue and green. (For instance, if your psyche is the least bit frail, I don’t recommend reading Tony Gallagher’s recent columns, as they will likely send you into a funk that is funkier than Bootsy Collins on bass).

For Alain Vigneault, however, the vitriol has been aimed his way all season. According to some fans, Vigneault is hanging on to the Canucks’ coaching job by his fingertips and every single one of his decisions is a foot smashing down on his fingers. According to these fans, if the Canucks don’t make it to the Western Conference Final, Vigneault should be fired. If they don’t make the Stanley Cup Final, Vigneault should be fired. If they don’t win the Stanley Cup, Vigneault should be fired fired fired.

None of these things are legitimate reasons to fire Alain Vigneault, but don’t worry Vigneault-haters: we have 16 legitimate reasons to fire him.

Earlier this season, Chris Higgins missed time with a mysterious infection of some sort, and we at PITB immediately screamed “Zombie bite.” Of course, no one takes our opinions seriously (which is probably a good thing), so our suggestion was ignored.

But then the infection struck again, and Higgins missed even more time. A highly-resist strain of infection? Definitely zombiism, which isn’t just highly-resistant, it’s potentially virulent.

And yet still, we were ignored. Eventually, Higgins was brought back to health with antibiotics and rest and returned to the lineup, where we have secretly feared that he would pass the infection onto his teammates ever since. And, judging from this photo from the Canucks’ tilt with the Phoenix Coyotes, it would appear that our concerns were justified. I’m not sure how this isn’t a bigger story, but on Wednesday night, Chris Tanev and Sami Salo ate an official.

Lovers of high-tempo, offensive hockey were dreading this game, considering the two previous meetings between these teams were 1-1 affairs that both went to the shootout. Those who were not anticipating offence may have forgotten that Phoenix and Vancouver combined for 75 shots in their last matchup and a combination of stellar goaltending and bad bounces were the only reason 9 goals weren’t scored.

But 9 goals were scored in this game, meaning that the goaltending wasn’t stellar and the bounces weren’t bad. Unless you recently travelled forward through time from the 80′s, in which case I mean the bounces were bad. They were the baddest. Totally tubular, in fact. I watched this game.

Mason Raymond has become public enemy no. 1 in Vancouver of late, and it’s easy to see why. The winger only has 16 points this season, with 8 coming in his first month back from injury in December, so the numbers, like the fans, aren’t exactly giving him the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore, nearly every error he makes occurs in the offensive zone, the only zone many Canuck fans seem to watch. Between his tendency to fall down and his penchant for turnovers, his squirrelly play inside the opposition’s end stands out even to the most passive observer.

Futhermore, you know there’s still a large contingent of fans that thought the Canucks could get what they need at the deadline simply by trading Raymond away. Amazingly, these same fans would have been happy if he had been flipped for a bag of Skittles (even tropical flavour). Somehow, the Canucks’ winger was both worthless and worth everything, and when he wound up going nowhere, Vancouver fans were upset that Mike Gillis was unable to move his magic beans.

When Cody Hodgson was moved instead, the mood on Raymond soured even further. For fans that had fallen in love with Hodgson’s play and had already traded Raymond in their minds, the events of trade deadline day were like swapping Hodgson to bring back Raymond.

All of this is to say that Alain Vigneault wasn’t going win, regardless of where he played the much-maligned MayRay Wednesday night, because fans want to see Raymond in a fiery furnace, not in the lineup.

Everyone knows what Manny Malhotra looks like: bald and beautiful. He’s been rocking the chrome dome for over 8 years, so it’s easy to assume that he’s always been bald. I just assumed that he’s been shaving his head ever since he was a kid or that his head simply never produced hair longer than a millimetre.

Nope. Turns out, Manny used to have hair. And not just any hair: awesome hair.

Dan Hamhuis was the guest on Hockey Night in Canada After Hours Saturday night.

The Canucks haven’t been on HNIC a whole lot this season, which, when you think about it, sort of makes sense. Between their surprise Presidents’ Trophy win and the Stanley Cup run, they got a lot of screentime last year. You can understand why the CBC would want to spread the coverage around a bit during the regular season, especially since it seems likely that the Canucks will be the only Canadian team to talk to once the playoffs reach the second round — unless they underachieve or Ottawa, Winnipeg or Calgary overachieves.

(For what it’s worth, this new equity of coverage policy would be a lot easier to stomach if the Leafs didn’t remain exempt from it. But I digress.)

But Hamhuis’s appearance on the postgame chat program made it two weeks in a row for Vancouver players after Kevin Bieksa took to the chair last week. The back-to-back appearances for the two members of the Canucks’ top shutdown pairing made for a stark contrast. Where a fancily-dressed Bieksa mugged, smirked, quipped, and gum-chewed his way through nearly twenty minutes of awkwardly hilarious airtime, a sleepy-eyed Hamhuis respectfully gave mumbled, measured, straightforward answers to questions.

But, while the entertainment value may have dipped, there’s still some pretty good stuff in here.

I know, I know. We said we were done with Tanner Glass fighting bears. But this is just too cool.

As you may know, Glass was in town last week with his new crew, the Winnipeg Jets, who joined forces with the Canucks to treat us to one of the most entertaining games of the season. We treated his return as a chance to return to the bear-fighting well, producing a new gallery of photos of the Jets’ pugilist puzilizing nature’s giant, marauding, godless killing machines.

And that would have been that. But on Monday, Mitch Murray sent us this photo:

Manny Malhotra has been much-maligned for his play this season. The defensively-minded centre is on pace for his lowest point total since 2002-03 and has been relegated to a fourth line role, drawing criticism over what some feel is a deserved demotion. Personally, I feel that the criticism ignores the unique role that Malhotra plays in the Canucks lineup. As Thomas Drance suggested, Manny Malhotra is the Penny to the Sedins’ Inspector Gadget: he plays the tough minutes so other Canucks don’t have to.

What everyone can agree on, however, is that Malhotra remains a faceoff wizard. Now, it seems, Mike Gillis wants to take even that away from him.

There has been much consternation about the twin scoring slumps of twin scoring champs Daniel and Henrik Sedin, but it’s worth noting that offensive droughts are an inevitability in professional hockey. Sometimes they just happen. Heck, Aaron Rome once went through a spell during his time in Vancouver in which he only tallied 1 goal in 105 games. Now that’s a slump. He finally got back to his usual scoring self this November with 3 goals in 4 games, but then his luck turned once again and he immediately fell into another prolonged drought. The poor guy only has 1 goal in his last 34 games!

But hey man, that’s just slumping.

Granted, unlike Aaron Rome, the Sedins have been fairly slump-resistant in recent memory (perhaps they carry slump repellant in their utility belts?). Their current drought, while a far cry from the potato famine some are making it out to be, is still the worst in a decade, or, as Henrik Sedin brilliantly put it Saturday night, “Way back then I was a crappy player.”

You can understand why there’s a little unrest about the great Sedin scoring famine of 2012. For the past two seasons, the Sedins have been so automatic that, if they were pointless late in a tied game, you could be confident in the Canucks’ ability to finish on top because their inevitable goal was still forthcoming. Not so over this recent stretch.

So what’s been the issue?

It’s a stressful time right now. The Canucks have lost 3 of their last 4 games, making this the worst slump of the season since mid-October, when they also lost 3 of 4. This massive, enormous tailspin has Canuck nation in a tizzy that is threatening to turn into a veritable hubbub.

The Canucks had a strong first period in this one, outshooting the Montreal Canadiens by a margin of 15-5. Unfortunately, Carey Price held his team in the game, stopping all 15 shots. If he hadn’t done so, this game would have been very different, most notably because Vancouver would have gone into the second intermission with a 15-goal lead.

That would have been a fun “I Watched This Game” to write. But, sadly, that’s not how this game went down. Instead, this “I Watched This Game” tells of a game in which the Canucks scored 14 fewer goals. I watched this game.

Earlier this week, Alain Vigneault talked about Chris Higgins’ plus-5 scoring chance differential over the Canucks’ losses to the Sabres and Stars. The two-game sample Vigneault referred to isn’t much to go on, but it was enough to make plain that the Canucks use a different methodology in their in-house tracking of scoring chances than what we use to track scoring chance data over at Canucks Army. What Vigneault’s number did correlate exactly with, however, was Higgins’ personal Fenwick +/- number.

This isn’t the first time that the Canucks seemed to be paying close attention to a players’ Fenwick number. At about this time last season, when everyone was confused as to why Vigneault seemed to prefer the unremarkable Aaron Rome over the more visibly skilled Keith Ballard, Cam Charron pointed out that Rome’s Fenwick events against rate was significantly lower than Ballard’s. We theorized that, for a third pairing defenseman, Vigneault preferred Rome’s “safe minutes” to Ballard’s more adventurous (albeit exciting) style of play.

Because I’m increasingly convinced that the Canucks place importance on a players’ individual “fenwick number,” I figured it would be worthwhile to break down the Canucks’ blue-line in this manner. Let’s see if we can get a handle on which defencemen have been the “best” defensively from a shot suppression standpoint.

Thursday night’s tilt with the Winnipeg Jets was, like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, a barn-burner. It was a wide open affair with chances in both directions, as the two teams combined for 77 shots on goal with another 64 attempted. Amazingly, considering the speed of the game and the plenitude of opportunities for sexy offensive plays, the Canucks’ first two goals came on fluky bounces.

But Sammy Pahlsson’s game-winner was as hot as Ilya Bryzgalov’s husky.

Upon revisiting it, I’m struck by just how easily that play — in which the puck practically nests at the top of the zone, untouched, for a couple unnervingly long stretches — could have gone horribly awry. Kevin Bieksa’s primary assist, especially, could just have easily been the second assist on a game-winning goal for the Jets.

Bieksa often gets criticized for playing too casual or too loose, especially with the game on the line, and he certainly would have faced those criticisms if this play had been broken up. But it wasn’t, and thus, we break down the game-winning goal by Sammy Pahlsson, not Bryan Little, and a brilliant, not bone-headed, play by Kevin Bieksa.

This game was like the spaces favoured by The Dixie Chicks: wide open. There were 77 shots on net between the two teams, with another 43 shots blocked, and 21 missed shots. That’s a grand total of 141 attempted shots or, as the stats nerds would say, 141 Corsi events.

It’s a lot easier to understand now how the Jets were involved in a 9-8 slugfest with the Philadelphia Flyers earlier this season. The only reason this game didn’t devolve into similar silliness was the seriousness of Cory Schneider and Ondrej Pavelec, who combined for 72 saves. That’s still less than 77, which explains why goals were scored. I watched this game.

Spitballin’ (or Super Pass It To Bulis: All In, if you love adventurous acronymizing) is a feature that allows us to touch on a multitude of things really fast, because in the world of hockey, there are always lots of things to find and colour. Here are a few quick topics.

One of the worst aspects of the Winnipeg Jets being in the Southeast Division is that we only get to see Tanner Glass, bear-fighter, and Kyle Wellwood, defensive superstar, once this season. Glass and Wellwood are two of PITB’s favourite former Canucks and it has been incredibly rewarding to see them experience success in Winnipeg. The Jets are currently in 8th place in the Eastern Conference and are battling with the Capitals and Sabres for that final playoff spot, and the contributions of Glass and Wellwood are playing a big role.

The biggest nerd on the Canucks this season left town at the trade deadline, but he couldn’t touch Kyle Wellwood, the library enthusiast, when it comes to nerdity. The Halo-playing, Ayn Rand-reading, no-TV-watching weirdo was a little more under-appreciated in Vancouver, however.

Winnipeg, on the other hand, loves him unequivocally.

Obviously, our fondness for Tanner Glass has little to do with his offensive output. The Saskatchewan-born winger put up only 7 goals and 22 points over his two seasons in Vancouver, and routinely drew our ire when deployed on the third line. But, he was and is one of our favourite Canucks ever because, between his excellent opinions on community outreach, board games, and appropriate on-ice trash talk, Glass is simply one of the NHL’s best people.

Since joining the Winnipeg Jets, Glass has even proved himself as a third-liner, forming a formidable checking trio with Jim Slater and Chris Thorburn. He’s established career-highs in goals and points (although, at only 5 and 14, respectively, he’s still more of a natural checker). But that’s not all Glass has been up to. As it turns out, Winnipeg is just crawling with bears.

PITB has previously featured Glass fighting bears here, here, and here (and one time someone made a sign). With the Jets in town on Thursday night, I thought we’d look at one more collection of ursine pugilism from Canada’s best bare-knuckle bear boxer.