When Alex Edler first came into the league, he quickly endeared himself to Canuck fans and management team with his calmness and ability to make smart passes in both zones. His development has accelerated over the past couple of seasons, and while he continues to struggle with his consistency at times, he’s become a top defenceman in the NHL. On Thursday morning, the league noticed, naming Edler to the 2011-12 NHL All-Star roster.

Edler has more tools than Inspector Gadget: at 6’4″, 210, he’s big, and when he has a mind to, he can hit like it; his shot is lethal, whether it’s a quick, accurate wrister or a high-velocity slapper; and his puck control occasionally causes me to drop my jaw, as if my jaw were hot. The 26 year old Swedish defenceman has channeled all these tools into a fabulous first half of the season. Edler is fourth in scoring, both on the Canucks and among all NHL defensemen, on pace to notch 13 goals and pile-up 55 points this season.

He’s emerged as an excellent defenseman and a deserving All-Star, but I’d suggest to you that he’s not the team’s most valuable blueliner. As Harrison Mooney wrote yesterday in his discussion of whether or not Alexander Edler was “the right choice” for the All-Star game, “Dan Hamhuis… has been the steadiest Canucks’ defenceman for well over a year now.” I tend to agree.

It’s very easy to look at the Canucks’ 2-3-1 start and place a large portion of blame on their goaltender, Roberto Luongo. After all, his 3.70 GAA and .856 SV% places him near the bottom of the league. This is one of those cases, however, where the stats don’t tell the whole story. The defensive breakdowns in front of the Canucks’ goaltenders have been a major contributor to the Canucks’ struggles so far and it’s clear that the coaching staff is thinking the same thing.

The juggling of defence pairings has begun in earnest, as even last season’s stalwart duo of Dan Hamhuis and Kevin Bieksa, or HamJuice as they’re affectionately known, have been split up. The reasoning is simple: the Canucks just don’t have enough right side defencemen.

Canuck fans got a taste of Dan Hamhuis’s skillset last season, as he smoothly transitioned into the team’s top defense pairing, providing a steadying presence for Kevin Bieksa and, with him, establishing one of the league’s most effective shutdown duos.

But have we seen all Dan Hamhuis has to offer? No, and I’m not talking about the promising offensive flourishes he’s shown through two games this season. I’m talking about the karate.

It wasn’t often, but when Dan Hamhuis chose to join the rush, his timing was narrowly impeccable. Five of the six goals Hammy scored last season are the result of Hamhuis jumping into the play just in time to score on a rebound or receive a sudden centering pass. Pitching in whenever necessary? Sure sounds like the Community Man. Here’s every goal Dan Hamhuis scored in 2010-11.

Canucks news comes fast and furious, and sometimes we find ourselves playing catchup. Thankfully, the Dreaded Two Goal Lead–often called “the worst lead in hockey”–is super easy to come back from. Everybody knows it’s a guaranteed death sentence for those that hold it. Well, much like an ice hockey team coming from two goals down, PITB will now effortlessly catch up.

Between nasty hits, high sticks, crosschecks, a finger-biting trend, and misconducts galore, it’s probably safe to say that the Stanley Cup Final has been a chippy affair. Though there’s always some concern when two teams that don’t often see each other often meet, Vancouver and Boston never struggled to generate bad blood. However, it’s been my understanding that, any time hatred appears this strong, it’s powered by an equally strong undercurrent of love. After 10 days in one another’s company, is it hyperbole to say that Vancouver and Boston have actually become best friends forever? Certainly not. Truth is, while the media is busy telling stories of the dirty, overrated, and unlikable Canucks, much of their ammunition has come by way of misreporting on Vancouver’s many, many random acts of kindness. Here are eleven genial gestures that have been misconstrued.

There was a momentary thrill of excitement when Dan Hamhuis flipped Milan Lucic with a textbook hipcheck. It bore a strong similarity to his midseason decimation of the Sharks’ Douglas Murray and had the potential to take Lucic off his game and focus the Bruins’ attentions on abstract concepts like “revenge” rather than the more concrete goal of, well, scoring goals.

That momentary thrill was immediately replaced by concern when Hamhuis dropped to all fours and disappeared inside a scrum. After watering Hamhuis with Gatorade (it’s got what plants crave), the Bruins likely felt like complete tools when he limped to the bench, headed straight down the tunnel, and didn’t return for the rest of the game. This has raised some concerns as Hamhuis likely will not return to the Canucks lineup for Saturday’s Game 2 and is questionable for the rest of the series.

Dan Hamhuis is listed as questionable for game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final after tweaking something in his middle to lower body (eff you, postseason injury nondisclosure policy) while executing the picture-perfect hipcheck on Milan Lucic you see here. It’s an awesome hit, but the collateral damage may be too great for Canuck fans to stomach. It’s hard to respect the the technical expertise and highlight-reel quality of a play that injures a defenseman on your team’s top defensive pairing.

Most are wishing it never happened. Some are even blaming Hamhuis for attempting it.

Some say the hipcheck is a lost art in the NHL, but you’d be hard pressed to find a Vancouver fan that feels this way. The offseason additions of Keith Ballard and Dan Hamhuis, two defenders that love to hip check, made going wide versus the Canucks a downright dicey proposition. Eventually, even Aaron Rome fell in love with the hit, giving the Canucks three guys who could surprise with a hipcheck at seemingly any moment. The result: perhaps the only team in the NHL for whom the hipcheck was common.

I’m not sure Canucks fans realized how spoiled they were this season. With that in mind, PITB has compiled a countdown of the five finest hipchecks thrown by the boys in blue and green in the 2010-11:

Here’s the Canucks.com Reid Report, featuring a Dan Hamhuis interview in which Ryan Kesler, again, drifts into the frame, toplessly nourishing himself.

If you’re keeping score at home, that two Canucks.com videos this week to feature creepy, topless Ryan Kesler. Is he going for the topless hat trick? Is Kristin Reid aware that he’s committed to bogarting her interviews?

Canucks 3 – 0 Ducks After the highly contentious atmosphere in the Staples Center last night, the Honda Center was downright pleasant. It’s not just that the Anaheim fans are generally more congenial (one woman gave us free hot dogs), but the building itself is a little nicer, a little more organic. Whereas the Staples [...]

After spending about twenty hours in the Nissan Versa, bickering about music selection, coining new swear words, and fighting off an invisible army of cramps, well, it was some sort of glorious reprieve to finally get to the hockey portion of the road trip. Not that there weren’t highlights en route. For example: Bonnie Tyler’s Faster Than [...]

Canucks 3 – 2 Blues I feel like we’ve been spouting this statistic a lot lately, but the Canucks still haven’t lost two consecutive regulation games since November. I used to be impressed; now I’m just annoyed. I mean, they keep alternating wins and losses, forcing me to point to this statistic every second game. [...]

Canucks 3 – 4 Ducks It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve watched the Canucks suffer a home regulation loss, and I’m a little uncertain of how to feel about it. At this point in the season, it’s not unlike like being gored by a unicorn: sure, it’s undesired, but it’s so rare that [...]

Canucks 4 – 2 Senators You’d have thought, from the tone of the media coverage leading up to this game, that Ottawa was coming in with a bag over their collective heads, while the Canucks had been spotted a guillotine, a French audience, and a death warrant personally signed by Maximilien Robespierre. From the outset, [...]

Canucks 2 – 1 Predators With a win versus Nashville last night, the Canucks go into All-Star weekend having collected at least one point in 27 of their last 30 games. Yes, that’s the stat Don Taylor reported postgame on Sportsnet Connected, and I want to take a moment to marvel at it. Consider that [...]

Canucks 7 – 1 Stars Friends, Romans, countrymen, I ask you, humbly, what is the cure for an offensive slump? Don’t answer; this is a rhetorical question. The solution, as everybody knows, is an opponent with porous goaltending and crap defense. It’s a fairly simple remedy, but the real trick is finding a major league [...]

Canucks 1 – 2 Sharks Before we go any further, a brief dissertation on the first game back from a road trip: we saw, in The Game That Shall Not Be Named, and in the wise words of the team’s sleep doctor, that the first game back from a road trip often yields a team [...]

Ask it to Bulis is a regular feature wherein casual readers and hardcore Bulies alike can put their questions to two guys no more qualified to answer than they are. Harrison and Daniel preside: Greatest Canucks’ mustache: Babych or Snepsts? – @staticotakuH: Tough first question. I’m gonna go with Snepsts, and for totally subjective reasons. [...]

Canucks 4 – 1 Stars The Canucks closed out 2010 the same way they opened it: with a win over the Dallas Stars, but don’t let the 4-1 score fool you into thinking this was just another rout of a good team. Vancouver outscored Dallas, but that’s about the only stat category they won. Thankfully, [...]

Canucks 4 – Red Wings 5 (OT) The Canucks and Red Wings have met twice this season, and both games have been among the most entertaining of the year. We at PITB often talk about the way Canucks fans view their team’s games through a vaccuum; we disregard the play of the other team and [...]