Alex Burrows has scored his second goal in as many games since returning to the Team Canada lineup after his injury in the first game of the tournament. While it was a nice goal, it was just one of eight that Canada scored on Kazakhstan, who couldn’t repeat their gutsy effort from their overtime game against the US. It was probably too much to ask of the Kazakhstan to handle the US and Canada on back-to-back nights, and the game got silly in the third period as Kazakhstan simply looked worn out against Canada’s superior depth.

Fortunately, Burrows didn’t just score a goal. He also played a solid two-way game, seeing ice time in all situations, and was named the Best Player of the game for Canada. Even better, his wife, Nancy, and one-year old daughter, Victoria, were in attendance and got to see the whole thing.

Oh, and Burrows hugged Kazakhstan goaltender Vitali Kolesnik in the middle of the game.

Normally, when we feature videos on Pass it to Bulis, they are made by other people. Not this one. This is a PITB original. I should clarify: Harrison might want to avoid all association with this video, because it contains a very silly song and Harrison is a very serious person. Not me: I revel in silliness.

You see, when I’m not writing about hockey, I often write comic book-inspired songs under the name Hooray for Gooba about evil twins, dinosaur fighters in space, big-headed supervillains, and time travel shenanigans. This weekend, however, I wrote a different type of song. A love song. A Trevor Linden love song.

And now I want to share it with all of you.

We had a bird in my house growing up — a cockatiel. It could speak, sort of. On rare occasions, it would mumble, “Birdy, birdy, birdy,” to the amazement of anybody in the room at the time. (This always struck me as unimpressive. No one would be wowed by a guy that just said, “Human. Human,” all the time.) But no one much cared for Birdy (we let her name herself). She was a biter. Also, my dad was told she was a male when he bought her, but then one day she laid eggs. No one likes a bird that makes a fool of you by changing sexes.

Anyway, after Birdy, I’m not much for birds. But I could totally get behind Moko, a grey African parrot and, apparently, a Vancouver Canucks fan.

As Canuck fan videos go, filmmaker Adam MacKay-Smith’s Johnny Canuck series is completely unparalleled. The short films, which feature a lumberjack that bears a suspicious resemblance to playoff-bearded Aaron Rome fighting his way through a lonely world in which everyone and everything is out to destroy him, are moving, captivating and visually stunning. Plus the narration is flawless.

Now comes the third film in the series, The Unfinished Fight of Johnny Canuck. In it, Johnny axes a king right between the eyes, destroys a man’s motorcycle with a stick to the spoke, and punches a bear right in his smug face. It is epic and fantastic.

With the Canucks down 3-0 in their first round series against the Los Angeles Kings, fans are looking for something to distract them from their favourite team’s playoff woes. Fortunately, these two fan videos for Kevin Bieksa and Ryan Kesler are plenty distracting.

Originally made back in May of 2011 for last year’s run to the Stanley Cup Final, they somehow escaped our notice. I have no idea how we missed them first time around, because they are completely insane and awesome.

With Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know” at the height of its popularity (seriously, I’ve seen it on every television show I’ve watched this week), I figured it would only be a matter of time before some group of hockey fans somewhere gave it the playoff parody treatment. Sure enough, the inevitable has happened, and the group behind it are citizens of Canuck nation.

This video is the product of comedy team IFHT, whose name is best left as an unexplained acronym (for the same reason B.M.F.A, Martha Wainwright’s debut single, was). In a nice touch, the team takes it one step further than just parodying Gotye’s song, also styling their video after his, with face paint, awkward standing and a pretty girl yelling in their ear:

Recently, Chris Withers wrote a guest blog for the Sun where he compared the culture at a Vancouver Canucks game to the mood at a Vancouver Whitecaps game, and he found the hockey crowd wanting. The experience of watching the ‘Caps play, he argued, seemed far more spirited, involving, and organic.

So what’s the problem with Rogers Arena? The different clientele? The canned music? The fact that the whole experience can feel overproduced? No, I’ll tell you what it is: they just don’t give away enough dogs anymore.

Not like in the olden days, man. For instance, here’s a video from November 7th, 1970, when they commemorated “Yukon night” at Pacific Coliseum by giving captain Orland Kurtenbach a husky puppy.

Ryan Kesler has been everywhere this past year. Whether it’s appearing naked in ESPN the Magazine or popping up behind whomever the true subject of a photo or video is meant to be, Kesler has been appearing all over the place. The one place I didn’t expect him to appear: The CW.

That’s about to change. Sort of. Ryan Kesler will get a shoutout on The CW’s teen drama (with witchcraft) “The Secret Circle” on Thursday, but thanks to a promo they have released, you can see the relevant scene right now.

The only goal scored on a goaltender in Monday night’s game between the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Wild came on a powerplay that was, according to Canucks fans, a trifle controversial. After Dany Heatley shoved Daniel Sedin near the benches, Alex Burrows rushed in to defend his Swedish semi-sibling, leading to a veritable brouhaha that included a donnybrook between Kevin Bieksa and the Wild’s Nick Johnson.

When the dust settled, Bieksa and Johnson received fighting majors and Burrows received the extra minor for roughing, putting the Wild on the powerplay. Heatley escaped entirely unharmed, receiving neither a penalty nor a punch in the face, both of which he arguably deserved.

To Wild fans and media, however, a much bigger concern was that Daniel Sedin almost removed Dany Heatley’s head with a vicious slash.

Wait, what?

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

Despite months of superb goaltending, some fans just don’t seem willing to cut Roberto Luongo any slack. His (and the team’s) rough start against the Sabres on Saturday reignited the old goaltender debate in some corners. Heck, it didn’t even take a bad start by Luongo for the Team 1040 to ask which goaltender should get the start in the playoffs in their daily poll question just over a week ago.

On Saturday I wrote a post about how our perception of players changes the more we see them. Because Luongo gets more starts than Schneider and has been playing in Vancouver for a longer period of time, Canucks fans are far more aware of his flaws than they are of Schneider’s. But that argument likely won’t sway everyone, which means it’s time for something more flashy and visually stimulating.

It’s time for a fan video. Fortunately for us, KingOfTheIce71 made a great one.

When Alain Vigneault launched into a giggle fit during Sunday’s game against the Dallas Stars, the video went viral like crazy. Apparently people can’t get enough of an NHL coach, who is normally grim and serious during a game, laughing like a fool.

He was supposedly laughing at Vernon Fiddler’s impression of Kevin Bieksa’s angry face, but I don’t buy it. Fiddler’s impression was amusing, sure, but not enough to make someone laugh in such an uncontrollable fashion. He must have been laughing at something else. Here’s my guess:

Roberto Luongo has become a very divisive figure in Vancouver. Either you love him or you hate him, and if you hate him, you hate him vociferously. He wilts under pressure. He’s not clutch. He loses his stick too often. He flops around like a fish. These are just some of the oft-voiced criticisms.

But people wouldn’t say these things if Luongo-hating summoned his ghost like saying “Candyman” or “Bloody Mary” three times into a mirror, now would they?

Of course, only a five-year old could believe something that silly. Take Jordan, for instance, a youngun who backs off on his “Carey Price is better than Roberto Luongo” argument the moment his Auntie suggests she might just tell Luongo where he lives and let the Canucks’ netminder come get him.

A weird thing happened over the weekend: Don Cherry, that great defender of toughness in hockey, actually called the Canucks tough. I’m not joking. It actually happened.

The main (and only) reason that this is significant is that Cherry is the king of the surface-level observation. He seems to look at something once, get an impression, and immediately have a take. If Cherry’s first impression is that the Canucks are a tougher team and that “Boston’s not going to push them around any more” that is a positive for the Canucks, because that means that other teams are getting that same impression. If “toughness” and “Canucks” can be put together in people’s minds more often, that can only benefit the team.

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 topics that deserve mention.

Way back in October, we highlighted a fantastic pump-up video of Ryan Kesler by Bhavin Solanki. It was our first encounter with Solanki’s work and we were suitably impressed. So impressed, in fact, that we jokingly requested he create a pump-up video of Keslurks set to “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. Somehow, we completely [...]

Just one week ago, the Canucks played the Bruins in the most thrilling game of the season. During the contest, Canucks fans witnessed one of the dirtiest things you will ever see in hockey. I’m not talking about Brad Marchand low-bridging Sami Salo; I’m talking about Cody Hodgson’s filthy slapshot that blew past Tim Thomas for the gamewinning goal. It was, as the kids say, sick, ill, and nasty.

You just don’t see slapshots like that any more, at least from a forward’s stick. The slapshot is normally the domain of the hulking blueliner who is able to put a massive amount of leverage on the stick to propel the puck forward. The two modern-day masters of the slapshot are Zdeno Chara, who is 6’9″ and 255 lbs, and Shea Weber, who is 6’4″ and 232 lbs.

Hodgson is an even 6′ and weighs a mere 185 lbs. Yet his slapshot is both blistering and precise.

My favourite part about the goal was the gorgeous sound it made. There is no sweeter sound in hockey than the glorious *ping* of a slapshot that goes off the post and in.

If you’ve never heard of Heavy Eric before, well, that’s probably okay. But here’s what you need to know: the man’s been making Canucks-related roots music for quite some time now, having enjoyed a heyday, of sorts, for songs written during the West Coast Express era — most notably, “It’s Called the Todd Bertuzzi.”

This era is well past, but Heavy Eric soldiers on, and he recently uploaded a handful of songs to Youtube, all of which are dedicated to present members of the Vancouver Canucks.

Like many Canucks fans who spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, I’ve been following the Replace the Kurtenblog contest currently being held by our sister newspaper The Province. There are a lot of great people competing, many of whom we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know over the past couple years: Cam Charron, Jeff Angus, Clay Imoo, Katie Maximick, and Thomas Drance are all blogosphere mainstays and there are a lot of other quality bloggers in the race.

Because of this, it doesn’t feel right to throw PITB’s support behind any one blogger. But there’s one guy who I had never heard of prior to this competition and I just found his videos on YouTube. They are legitimately hilarious. His name is Jordan Bowman and he deserves some love.

Had he not debuted in Vancouver with a 30-goal season, there’s a good chance that Mikael Samuelsson might have had the same relationship with Vancouver as, say, Jan Bulis. Like this blog’s namesake, Samuelsson was a pretty weird guy.

There were the stunningly blunt quotes, such as when he told the media where Sweden could go or that he was incapable of fighting; there were the bizarre on-ice decisions, such as his complete unpredictability when it came to holding, shooting, or passing the puck; there were the sudden bouts of on-ice rage, seemingly uncharacteristic for the guy insistent that his teammates play whistle to whistle. Mikael Samuelsson was a genuine enigma, and Canuck fans don’t generally have much time for guys like that.

Unless they outscore their weirdness. And, as I said, Mikael Samuelsson did that. The Swedish winger put up 48 goals and 103 points in his two seasons in Vancouver. He quarterbacked the powerplay (better than anyone else the Canucks employed, contrary to popular opinion — a point I never got to make), and he was a great backup winger for the twins.

The dude could play, and he scored some meaningful goals in a Canucks uniform. Here are his five best.

Youtube is full of pump-up videos. These fan-made compilations, which combine sports highlights with epic music, tight editing and, usually, a theme of some kind, are designed in order to get you, the viewer, totally jacked before playoff games, seasons, and trips to the gym. Because they’re made by amateurs, usually with whatever footage they can “borrow”, not every one of them works. But when they do, they really do.

Needless to say, there are many Canucks’ 2011-12 season pump-up videos on Youtube, but obviously, you can’t watch them all. With that in mind, and with the Canucks’ 2011-12 season opening this very night, PITB has selected our three favourite Canucks pump-up videos on the Youtubes, and we would like to share them with you, so as to get you appropriately jazzed for the evening’s festivities.

In case you weren’t aware, Canucks fans have a bit of a bad reputation around the NHL. Maybe it’s the blind homerism or the complaints about east coast bias. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the rioting.

This video from YouTube user cntific is both a promise to the Canucks to be better fans and the provider of a potential solution for future Stanley Cup Finals.

While the core of the Canucks remains relatively intact from last season, a handful of depth players have moved on to other homes. Christian Ehrhoff is in Buffalo. Tanner Glass is in Winnipeg. Raffi Torres is in Phoenix. Jeff Tambellini is in Switzerland. We recently stumbled across this video by the audiovisual crew over at Surrey’s Enver Creek Secondary School in which the kids from ECTV discuss which of the departed Canucks was dearest to them. As with most high school productions, it’s awkward, but not without its charms.

On August 4th, an announcement of vital importance was made: Owen Nolan was signed to a Professional Tryout Offer (PTO) with the Vancouver Canucks. This isn’t vital because Nolan is especially likely to make the team, though Kesler and Raymond’s injuries increase his chances, but because Owen Nolan has a Twitter account.

Also, he once brutally bodychecked Gino Odjick from behind face first into the boards.

If you haven’t seen the Wellwoods’ “Destiny” video, you probably should, especially because it will provide some context for what you see here. Mind you, do you really need context for this? It’s people flubbing lines, cracking up, and running around, dogs licking themselves, comedically poor automobile operation, and pretty women winking. If you can’t understand it, you need to read more books. Also, at one points, Morgan screams “No touching!” If you can’t get behind Arrested Development references, you might need to start your life over.

The Wellwoods are PITB’s official women’s road hockey team. They are funny, their videos are great, and we love them. With that in mind, we present “Outtakes from ‘Destiny,’” their latest filmic endeavour.