Though it was a tough way to lose the game, the Canucks can take solace in getting the game to overtime and earning the single point. Wait, what? That’s not how it works in the playoffs? The Canucks have been eliminated? That’s it? It’s over? Oh. I watched this game. Canucks 1 – 2 Kings [...]

The return of Daniel Sedin on Wednesday was expected to have a trickle-down effect on the Canucks lineup, but Alain Vigneault wasn’t content to just put things back the way they were. He put David Booth, who had just one goal in his last 14 games, with the twins and put Dan Hamhuis on the point of the powerplay instead of returning Sami Salo to his usual spot.

Both turned out to be good decisions: Booth picked up the primary assist on Kevin Bieksa’s gamewinning goal by using his speed to back off the defence, giving Bieksa plenty of room to shoot, while Hamhuis set up Alex Edler on the opening goal on the powerplay.

Both Booth and Hamhuis played a major role in Henrik Sedin’s insurance marker in the third period as well. I had an insurance marker once. It was a felt pen from where my parents bought insurance. It wasn’t as nice as Henrik’s goal.

After two-straight 1-0 shutouts, Canucks fans and media were starting to wonder if the team had completely forgotten how to score. Not me. I was worried that they had forgotten how to allow goals. Fact: no team has won the Stanley Cup without allowing a single goal.

Fortunately, the Canucks eased my concerns by giving up 2 goals to the visiting Dallas Stars. I was relieved when I watched this game.

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 Leafs came into Vancouver having lost 9 straight games to the Canucks and were hoping to prove that they’d made the changes necessary to be successful in the West, like the American Office. Instead, they just wound up being awkward and cringe-inducing, like the British office. It was initially exciting to watch the Canucks absolutely dominate an opponent, but by the end of the game I just wanted to look away. This game was executive-produced by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. I watched this game.

For only the third time this season, the Canucks played an entire sixty-minute game without being given a powerplay but, incredibly, it was the second consecutive time this phenomenon has occurred versus the Chicago Blackhawks. What’s more, this game was called by Ian Walsh, who called the last powerplay-free affair. Is this evidence of some kind of conspiracy?

No. Uncanny though the circumstances may be, there’s no agenda here. The Blackhawks simply played a fabulously disciplined game. Furthermore, while the Canucks may have played an entire sixty-minute game without being given a powerplay, they hardly played a sixty-minute game. You draw penalties by outworking the other team, and frankly, only Cory Schneider seemed interested in doing that for much of this game. So why didn’t he draw any penalties? Well, he was a little busy. So was I. I watched this game.

The 2012 NHL All-Star Game might have been a letdown if you were expecting playoff intensity, but for everyone who went in expecting a fun game of shinny featuring some incredibly talented hockey players, the game completely lived up to expectations.

For Canucks fans, there were a number of highlights, with Daniel and Henrik Sedin playing a major role up front, while Alex Edler was second in icetime for Team Alfredsson and third overall in the game.

Henrik tied Daniel Alfredsson’s team-high with 3 points, while Daniel (Sedin, that is) had two points of his own. And, while Edler was held off the scoresheet, he did tie Scott Hartnell and Shea Weber with a team-high plus-2 rating in a game Team Alfredsson lost by 3 goals.

Check out the highlights after the jump.

If you have been following this series all week, you may be wondering how there could possibly be 10 Canucks goals from 2011 that are better than the 40 we have seen already. We’ve seen Henrik Sedin pass the puck through a goaltender, Lee Sweatt score his first (and only) NHL goal in his first NHL game, and Ryan Kesler use a new stick from the bench both to score and to assist.

But just when you think you’ve seen everything, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You’re about to see goals scored in ways that don’t seem possible, goals scored by the unlikeliest of heroes to win big games, and goals that don’t make a dang bit of sense. It was an incredible year for incredible goals.

We have reached Day 4 of PITB’s countdown of the top 50 Canuck goals of 2011, and things are starting to get good. Today’s entries are downright crowded with Sedinery, as the twins combine to score beautiful goals, often incorporating some unexpected guests (such as Victor Oreskovich — for real).

The 2011 playoffs are well-represented as well, with some big goals from the Western Conference final. And if it’s controversy you crave, there may be a goal from 2010. Depends on who you ask. If this inclusion offends your delicate sensibilities, by all means, express your outrage in the comments.

Here we are at Day 3 of PITB’s list of our 50 favourite Canuck goals of 2011. Today features a heaping helping of beast mode Ryan Kesler, as well as a selection of the most curious pieces of Sedinery 2011 had to offer.

Have you ever seen a guy pass the puck through the legs of a goaltender, or away from the goalmouth with the goalie down and out? Have you ever seen a guy come to a complete stop directly in front of his defender? If so, you watched the Sedins in 2011. My friend, they don’t think like you and I. It’s pretty great. I suspect you’ll enjoy these 10 goals.

Welcome to Day 2 of PITB’s countdown of the top 50 goals the Vancouver Canucks scored in 2011. This afternoon you’ll be treated to a Daniel Sedin hat trick, a brilliant Ryan Kesler power move, and the bowling ball that is Raffi Torres.

There’s also a hat tip to what was a very common theme in the year that was: the victimization of the Pacific Division, as both San Jose and Dallas get burned multiple times. Provided you’re neither a Sharks fan nor a Stars fan, you’ll probably enjoy today’s goals.

Like life (according to John Lennon), we begin at 40.

After a pre-Christmas performance so stingy and humbugged it would make Ebenezer Scrooge proud (insomuch as that old coot can be proud of anything), the Canucks returned from the break as though they had been visited Christmas night by a trio of ghosts portending doom if they continued to be a team that loses to the Flames.

Here’s how it probably went down: the Ghost of Christmas Past took them to Christmas, 1987, when they were in the midst of a horrible stretch in which they won only once in 10 games. The Ghost of Christmas Present made them watch game tape from Friday night versus Calgary. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed them a horrifying future in which there is actual debate over whether or not the Sedins’ numbers should be retired.

Needless to say, the Canucks were forever changed by this harrowing experience, and they were thus far more generous versus the Edmonton Oilers, giving fans five goals to cheer about, and even anonymously sending a prize turkey to the Cratchit home. I watched this game.

2011 was a fabulous year for Canucks hockey. Sure, the Stanley Cup Final may not have ended quite the way Vancouver fans wanted it to, but the Canucks were still in it, and that’s a rarity deserving of some serious appreciation.

If you ask me, so was the 2011 team in its entirety. Between the wizardry of the Sedins, the raw power of Ryan Kesler, the stable of offensive-minded defensemen, the occasional flashes of brilliance from the skilled corps of middle wingers, and the gaggle of set plays the team employs, the fans in this city are spoiled right now. We may never see another team like this one again.

With that in mind, it would be crazy to let this year in Canucks hockey lapse without looking back at some of its incredible goals. What follows is a countdown of our favourite 50, which will run Monday through Friday at 9am sharp. Please feel free to disagree with this highly subjective list in the comments.

So it begins.

PITB’s list of the top 50 Canuck goals of 2011 begins next Monday, and you can rest assured that at least two of the goals the Canucks potted last night are going to be on that list: Henrik Sedin’s 1-0 goal and Alex Burrows’s 3-0 goal.

Now, Daniel already broke down the third goal, which is about as full of wizardry as Waverly Place, but with many raving about the wonders of Sedins’ first tally instead, I thought I’d take a closer look at that one as well.

The secret to defending the Sedins is very simple: don’t make any mistakes ever. If you leave a guy open for even a moment while they’re on the ice, there’s a pretty good chance that one of them will find him.

That’s how most of their goals are scored. Very rarely do they try to muscle their way to the net. They’re more content to move the puck around, forcing defenders to adjust to new alignments and, hopefully exposing, a new seam through which they can thread a pass. That’s what happens on this long give-and-go.

Monday night’s game against the Minnesota Wild was rife with wizardry, as the Sedins were in on three goals during the game, each of them magical. The first was a give-and-go that incredibly used the entire width of the ice and the second was off a sweet little tape-to-tape saucer pass from behind the net.

My favourite of the three, however, was the third goal, as it also involved the Sedins’ wizardous apprentice, Alex Burrows. The three of them managed to bewitch the Wild players into doing exactly what they wanted them to do, leading to a gorgeous goal by Burrows that sent Niklas Backstrom’s water bottle flying.

But why, exactly, were the Wild so befuddled? How did the Sedins and Burrows manage to score this fantastic goal?

After 5 games on the road, the Canucks returned to the cozy confines of Rogers Arena with some concern that there might be a letdown with all of the travel. Sure enough, the Canucks were outshot by the perpetually-low-shooting Minnesota Wild in the first period and had 7 giveaways. They looked blunt, dull, or flat: in any case, not sharp. They were not, however, outscored or outgoaltended. Roberto Luongo stopped all 13 shots he faced in the first period, then proceeded to stop every other shot as well, earning his first shutout of the season. I watched the Canucks finish strong because I watched this game.

Daniel Sedin’s trio of goals was an obscenely beautiful hat trick. It was so gorgeous that, immediately after the third goal of the suite, I declared it the most beautiful hat trick I’d ever seen.

But this may have been in haste. Immediately after I said it, a number of people countered with the hat trick that Daniel potted versus the Calgary Flames on April 10, 2010. You may recall that that hat trick featured the between-the-legs capper that is widely considered the finest goal in Sedin history. Is it possible that Tuesday’s hat trick wasn’t even the most beautiful of Daniel’s career?

Daniel Sedin has produced two remarkable hat tricks in the last 18 months. Which is lovelier? Let’s investigate.

Mason Raymond finally played his first game since having his back broken in last season’s Stanley Cup Final. He returned one-game later than intended after a paperwork error kept him out of Thursday’s game against the Nashville Predators and unwittingly unleashed the dreaded thirteenth forward curse on Aaron Volpatti.

In response to his return, the Flames panicked and started their backup, Henrik Karlsson, in place of Miikka Kiprusoff, who was the goaltender of record for both of Raymond’s two career hat tricks. Clearly, Kiprusoff is scared of Raymond. I’m sure that this game being the second of a back-to-back and the third game in four nights for the Flames had nothing to do with it. I watched this game.

For the first time this season, the Canucks’ defence looked calm, composed, and organized in their own end. Is it a coincidence that this was also Aaron Rome’s first game in the lineup? Of course not. Like a book under a wonky table leg, Rome is a steadying influence. Rome did it all tonight, seeing icetime in all situations, and scoring the first powerplay goal of his career. With that goal, Rome is on pace for 67 goals this season. Is it too early to start the Rome for Norris talk? If anything, it’s too late. Norris buzz needs to start in the pre-season. I watched this game.

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 looks at the shooting percentage of Sedin linemates.

That is not the Vancouver Canucks hockey that fans are used to from last season and I sincerely doubt that it is the Vancouver Canucks hockey that we see throughout the rest of the season. While certainly a fun game to watch with plenty of excitement, it was not good hockey. It wasn’t just the Canucks either, as both teams played irresponsible hockey full of consistently bad reads leading to defensive breakdowns, leaving both goaltenders helpless to stop the wide-open scoring chances that developed. Nine goals were scored on 67 shots in this game and I saw every single one, because I watched this game.

These final 11 goals of Daniel’s regular season are some of his prettiest, showcasing his accurate shot and knack for finding open ice to use it. While many of his other goals featured simple tap-ins after pretty passing plays, these goals show a lot more of Daniel’s skill with the puck and are a great reminder why he won the Ted Lindsay Award as voted by his peers. Many of his peers saw firsthand what he was capable of and many of them were victimized by those capabilities. Sure, there are a couple lucky bounces tossed in, but luck doesn’t happen on its own. These goals demonstrate how hard work creates the opportunities for good fortune to occur.

I have to be exceptionally careful while writing Daniel Sedin’s Every Goal for 2010-11. So many of his goals came off remarkable passing plays that I start to become desensitized to the Wizardous Sedinerie on display. I see yet another cross-ice, three-foot-high saucer pass over the sticks of two defenders and I scoff: “Pfft, he was totally looking at his brother when he made that pass. Wake me up when he does that blindfolded while freeing himself from a straitjacket.” Sometimes I have to slow down and take the time to appreciate each moment of wizardry. I encourage you to do the same: parcel out your viewing throughout the day. Watch each goal a few times, perhaps more if it’s a particularly pretty one. Also, tell someone you care about how much you love them. Never a bad time for that.

The best examples of Wizardous Sedinerie are rarely about the finish, which is usually just a tap-in into an open net. Because of this, many of Daniel’s 41 goals make his job look easy. All he has to do is corral the blind, backhand, spin-o-rama, cross-ice saucer pass from Henrik and direct it at the open 6′ x 4′ cage, but that underplays his contribution. Daniel’s ability to find open ice and anticipate Henrik’s passes is almost as impressive as the passes themselves. The fact that Daniel also makes those types of passes himself (as on display in other iterations of this year’s Every Goal series) is incredible.

Last week was Ryan Kesler Week, as we examined all 41 goals scored by the Canucks’ second-line center. How can we follow up on that? With Daniel Sedin Week, where we examine all 41 goals scored by the Canucks’ first-line left winger.

In case you haven’t heard, Daniel Sedin had a pretty good season in 2010-11. In the previous season, his brother picked up the Art Ross and the Hart trophies in 2009-10 and snidely remarked on-stage at the awards show in Las Vegas that he was better than Daniel. Essentially. Understandably, this set Daniel on edge and he was clearly out for blood. He got it. There was blood all over the ice, spurting from multiple wounds in the goal line, spraying all over opposition goaltenders. Every Canucks game was like an episode of True Blood in which a vampire gets staked.

Daniel led the NHL in scoring, winning the Art Ross trophy and the Ted Lindsay award. He finished 4th in goals scored, with 41, and led the league in powerplay goals with 18. And we’re about to recap every single one of those 41 goals. Here are goals 1-10. Expect wizardry. And blood. Perhaps some blood magic.