We’ve been talking about Roberto Luongo’s suspected secret Twitter account since late February, but with the Canucks’ elimination from the playoffs and Luongo’s reported trade request, the antics of @strombone1 have spiked in a major way of late. The man has basically been writing this blog for us for a week now.

On Tuesday, the continuing adventures @strombone1 went national when CBC picked up the story in a piece by Karin Larson. Here’s “Luongo on Twitter?”, a CBC investigative report.

For my money, the relationship between Roberto Luongo and the city of Vancouver has never been healthy. When you stop and think about it, it’s always sort of seemed like two people headed for a failed marriage.

First, there were the initial stages, when the City was over the moon for the guy, maybe even infatuated in an unhealthy way. We’d never been treated this well by anyone. That warped into a panic that he was too good for us and he might realize it and leave, which caused us to clamour for a promise, a marriage we weren’t quite ready for, a contract lasting forever. Not long after we got it, our fickle, immature hearts turned once again, and we realized how long “forever” truly was. Suddenly the whole thing soured, as we settled into routine. Then came the hardships, as the rigours of marriage (in this case, the Chicago Blackhawks) made him look human. Suddenly, the infatuation was lost, and that thrilling fear that he might leave us was replaced by a dull wish that he would. (How did New Jersey make it look so easy? Marriage is hard.)

Then someone new came along, and we felt that initial rush of excitement and infatuation for the first time in years. We wanted out, but we felt guilty asking, so we treated the guy like dirt in the hopes that he would suggest we end it. Then he did, and as we realized a major point in our lives was coming to an abrupt end, we began to re-examine the whole relationship, and suddenly found the lost memories of when we loved him the way we love the new suitor now. We couldn’t help but look back and wistfully reminisce about how it used to be.

It looks to me like Canuck nation has arrived at that final stage, the outpouring of all that lost emotion. As we approach the seeming end of Luongo’s tenure in Vancouver, I’d expect many more touching Roberto Luongo tributes like this one, titled “Live Forever”.

April has been a rough month for Roberto Luongo. On the 5th, he was pulled in favour of Cory Schneider in a game versus the Anaheim Ducks, and the Rogers Arena fans jeered him as he left the crease. In the playoffs, he was one of the Canucks’ best players in their first two games and for this, he was replaced by Schneider once again, never getting back into the goal.

Then, he watched from the bench as the Canucks were eventually eliminated in just 5 games, leading to a long offseason full of speculation, much of which will be focused on him. Has he tended goal in Vancouver for the last time? This week, he admitted he would waive his no-trade clause if asked, then a report surfaced that he had asked to be asked, so… perhaps. It’s an unstable time for the man either way.

But, if there’s one thing about Luongo that remains a constant, it’s that his super-secret suspected Twitter account will remain one of the best things on the Internet.

You might remember Brittany Carnegie from such breaking, front-page stories as that time she tweeted a picture of the vandalism at boyfriend Milan Lucic’s church, or that other time she dominated the news cycle for calling Cory Schneider’s girlfriend a trucker. The latter incident was quite the foofaraw, if you’ll recall. According to Carnegie, she wore a Bruins hat to a game, Schneider’s girlfriend gave her the finger for it, and then she captured the hearts and imaginations of the entire hockey world by tweeting the tale of this whole sordid affair.

Considering the universe had yet to right the egregious wrongs Carnegie suffered on that fateful night, you knew she might have something to say about Schneider getting beaten on Jarrett Stoll’s overtime winner that eliminated Vancouver from the playoffs Sunday night.

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.

Until proven otherwise, we at PITB are going to press on with our conviction that the @strombone1 account is owned and operated by one Roberto Luongo. As it stands, the evidence is on our side, as is the comedic value the account provides.

Recently, we noted that Luongo had taken to tweeting at a fake Roberto Luongo account to make jokes at his own expense. Last week, he effectively wished himself a happy birthday this way and later made a backhanded comment about Don Cherry’s tendency to mispronounce his name.

Over the weekend, Luongo employed this comedic trope three more times, all to amusing effect.

Now, despite plenty of convincing evidence, we can’t say for certain that @strombone1 is the Twitter account of one Roberto Luongo, but this no doubt how the Canucks’ netminder prefers it. Considering the way Canuck fans treat him these days, not to mention the way they chased Mike Duco off Twitter, or the horrible, misogynistic garbage they said to Theo Fleury and, more recently, Brittany Carnegie, you can understand why Luongo might choose to keep his Twitter account shrouded in mystery.

It’s also just funnier that way, and Luongo knows it.

We’ve seen some bizarre battle combinations in the ongoing rivalry between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. Brad Marchand versus Sami Salo. PITB versus Touch & Wilbur. Shawn Thornton versus 88 guys, Kill Bill-style, followed by a round with end boss Tony Gallagher. But now, it would appear, that we have another unlikely dispute: Cory Schneider’s girlfriend versus Milan Lucic’s girlfriend.

According to Lucic’s girlfriend, Brittany, Schneider’s girlfriend told her off at a recent game just for wearing her Bruins hat. This tell-off even included the taunt of English archers. How do we know? Because Brittany took to her Twitter account to voice her disapproval.

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.

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.

Wednesday night should have been Mason Raymond’s second big December 1 in a row. A year to the day after scoring a hat trick versus the Calgary Flames, the speedy winger was slated to play his first game since suffering a gruesome back injury that nearly ended his career.

And then there was a setback. No, it had nothing to do with Raymond’s health — he’s still good. It was a paperwork error. The Canucks simply failed to fax the proper forms to the NHL head office in time. Seriously.

As disappointing as this was, it was also hilarious (although we imagine Mason Raymond didn’t think so). Canuck fans immediately took to Twitter to make jokes at the Canucks’ expense, many of which were laugh-out-loud funny. What follows are our 20 favourite.

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.

After Ryan Kesler’s tweets became much more interesting while he sat around recovering from offseason hip surgery, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the Canucks’ long layoff in California would yield a little action on the Canucks on Twitter front, and we weren’t disappointed, as Dale Weise (@DaleWeise32) spent most of Tuesday afternoon interacting with Canuck fans in his first day on Twitter.

Weise became the latest in a long line of Canucks to sign up for an account in the past few months, a phenomenon we suspected might happen. While things weren’t looking up for tweeting Canucks in the wake of the Mike Duco fiasco, when Kevin Bieksa (@kbieksa3) finally caved to public pressure and signed up, you knew other Canucks were on the way.

If you’re a Canuck fan on Twitter, you’ve no doubt noticed the suspicious @Keith_Ballard4 Twitter account that sprung up a few weeks back, but has yet to issue a single tweet.

With the name on the account being what it is, we’ve seen a number of people question whether or not this is the real Keith Ballard. So is it? Probably. While there’s been no verification (primarily because there’s nothing to verify, since the account has just been sitting there), it seems reasonable to assume that this account is legit.

Some of you might remember the minor falling-out we caused earlier this summer, when we highlighted a small selection of Mike Duco’s tweets for the purposes of a gentle, comedic ribbing. You see, it seemed to us that a hockey player taking public jabs at a team and then immediately being traded to that team was amusing.

Unfortunately, many Canuck fans (some of whom were still feeling a bit rioty), didn’t find it amusing at all. Rather, they found it damnable, and took to bombarding Duco’s Twitter account with all manner of vitriol and harassment. The sudden wave of venom bothered Duco so much that, eventually, he felt there was no recourse but to shut down the account altogether.

Thankfully, our guilt has finally been alleviated, as Mike Duco relaunched his Twitter account this morning.

As most of you know, The Twitter Needs Juice campaign came to a fruitful end two nights ago, when Kevin Bieksa finally signed up for a Twitter account. Though his first tweet was contingent upon reaching 10,000 followers, Bieksa reached the milestone within 2 hours, and the following morning, it began.

Today we began to see the fruit of our labours, as Kesler and Bieksa combined to create a moment that was briefly amusing — which is, of course, all we ever wanted.

You may recall the Ryan Kesler/Nick Mangold blood feud that sprung up two days ago over Twitter. If you don’t remember (or you’re averse to clicking a link), here’s a kindly recap: Mangold tweeted pics of a few amusing interview bombs, champion Keslurker Kesler joked that Mangold needed to get his own material, Mangold responded snidely, a hate baby was born. Since then, things have gotten a little friendlier, but a challenge has also been issued and accepted.

Maybe it’s the fact that Ryan Kesler’s had a little more time on his hands to learn this Twitter machine; maybe it’s that potential Canuck Owen Nolan is threatening Kesler’s default title as best Canuck tweeter by tweeting pictures of things he killed; or maybe it’s just the doldrums of August, when anything even remotely Canuck-related passes for solid gold. Whatever it is, Ryan Kesler’s Twitter account has really picked up of late. It’s actually become sort of interesting. Take, for example, yesterday’s interaction between Kesler and New York Jets’ center (and Sam Beam lookalike) Nick Mangold, who recently discovered the joys of interview bombing.

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.

The Canucks announced today that Ryan Kesler underwent successful surgery to repair a labral tear that he suffered during game five of the Western Conference Final. You probably remember exactly what happened. Racing Dan Boyle for a puck, the entire lower half of Kesler’s torso exploded and his leg fell off. Then, he went to the dressing room, fashioned a new leg out of hockey sticks and tape, and returned, only to score the game-tying goal with thirteen seconds to go. Or at least that’s how fathers everywhere explained it to their kids.

Anyhow. Kesler’s recovery time is 10-12 weeks, meaning the Canucks will be without his services until November, at the earliest. (We’ll have more on what this means for Cody Hodgson later. But here’s a hint: his dark times may have passed. Again.) In the meantime, Kesler will have to spend a lot of time off his feet, which means he’ll have plenty of time to practice his tweeting.

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Yes, Mike Duco has deleted his Twitter account, and whether it’s by choice or by orders from a higher power — say, the organization to whom he was recently traded and with whom he recently signed a one-year, two-way contract — it happened as a direct result of the post we made on Sunday night. By now, you’ve probably heard all about it, especially since it turned into a major controversy. How major? Eventually, Mike Duco publicly apologized for his tweets. Twice.

Ladies and gentlemen: the offseason.

Putting the clamps to Mike Duco was never the intention although, in hindsight, I should have seen this coming. It’s only been a month since Canucks fans proved their penchant for overreacting and it was an especially slow news weekend. I presented Mike Duco’s Canuck-mocking tweets as little more than an amusing irony, because that’s how I read them when I found them. Many Canuck fans, on the other hand, jittery and bored as ever, took them as a personal affront. The second coming of Steve Francis. And, as they often do, they took to flaming Duco like Theo Fleury until he had to address the issue.

The Canucks’ offseason quest to completely remodel their fourth line personnel continued this weekend, as they dealt the rights of Sergei Shirokov to the Florida Panthers in exchange for little-known left winger Mike Duco.

Duco is in keeping with the prototype the Canucks seem to be after this offseason. He’s a gritty, hard-nosed, proven AHL scorer that has, as of yet, failed to break into the NHL, where he’d likely be a third or fourth line guy. Duco’s on the smallish side, but he’s no pushover. On top of his 20 goals and 11 assists with the Rochester Americans last season, the 5’10″, 190 lb. winger also racked up 126 PIM. And, in the NHL, he has half that (60) in only 12 games, for an average of 5 PIM a game. He’s a scrapper. Even his Twitter profile photo can attest to this: it’s a shot from his last NHL fight, a bout with Toronto’s Mike Brown.

You read that correctly, by the way: Mike Duco’s been on Twitter since April (@duco87), and considering our struggles to get interesting Canuck personalities on Twitter, we should be rejoicing: Duco speaks his mind. Unfortunately, he’s one of those guys that Ryan Whitney was talking about: he’s not so into the Canucks.

Sometimes, all it takes is a generous link from a blog with more traffic to remind us of how little power we actually have over here at PITB. Consider the Twitter Needs Juice post we made about a month and a half back: sure, some people read it, but not nearly as many people read it yesterday, after Derek Jory linked to it in his Juiceisms post over at Fort Nucks, the Canucks’ official blog. We humbly acknowledge your superior readership, sir.

It’s probably because Fort Nucks’ official hockey team (the Vancouver Canucks) is a little more popular than ours (The Vancouver Wellwoods), although let’s not sell the Wellwoods short. They’ve had a goalie captain for quite some time, and no one’s ever suggested Morgan wasn’t the right fit, which is more than I can say for Luongo.

Anyway, the best thing about the sudden bump is that people have finally begun sending in images of support for our silly little campaign.