Zack Kassian has looked pretty much ridiculous all season, but the playoffs are a time to step it up, and on Tuesday, the Kassquatch showed up to Canucks practice looking playoff ridiculous. Not only is he sure to have the team’s best beard, but he now proudly sports the team’s best haircut — a ratty playoff mullet that actually curls up in the back, because his hair is in a constant state of rebellion against his head.

After yesterday’s discussion about “hotness”, one might have been concerned that the Canucks were a team of pretty boys, too concerned about their looks to put it all on the line, but I would suggest that Zack Kassian singlehandedly breaks down that characterization. This dude is so unconcerned with his look that he’s bordering on something out of a Jim Henson movie already and the playoffs haven’t even begun yet.

The Vancouver Canucks handed out their team awards on Thursday night prior to their lacklustre effort against the Anaheim Ducks. Henrik Sedin took home the Cyrus H. McLean award as the Canucks’ leading scorer and will keep it unless Daniel manages to score 6 points on Saturday against the Oilers without Henrik getting any.

Dan Hamhuis deservedly won the Babe Pratt award for best defenceman, Cory Schneider understandably won the Cyclone Taylor award as the team’s MVP, and Jannik Hansen simultaneously had his praises sung as the team’s Most Exciting Player and was named the team’s unsung hero with the Fred J. Hume award.

That just doesn’t seem like enough awards, so we put together seven more:

Mike Smith was dynamite Monday night, making 40 saves as Vancouver peppered him with chance after chance. The Canucks managed to beat him three times, with two called back — one for goaltender interference and the other for a distinct kicking motion.

Smith was playing so well that you’d expect only the prettiest of goals to beat him. Instead, the Canucks won the game thanks to indecision, falling down, a flubbed shot, and missing an open net.

Quick, skilful passing plays that lead to goals often get described as tic-tac-toe. This play needs an easier child’s game than that: let’s go with Candy Land. Like Candy Land, it was completely random, with no one really deserving to win. Ryan Kesler just happened to draw the right cards to reach Candy Castle and rescue King Kandy first. There’s no glory in that. And yet, Kesler still celebrated the game-winner appropriately: like a three-year-old.

Let’s break down the madness, shall we?

Lost in the excitement of the Canucks’ compelling, dizzying lack of action on trade deadline day was the one roster move they did make, recalling Zack Kassian from their AHL affiliate in Chicago and sending down Bill “The Jet” Sweatt in his place.

The move brought to a close what appears to have been some sort of punishment for off-ice shenanigans, something that Kassian corroborated upon his return, saying that management had stressed “being a professional away from the rink.”

Granted, this somewhat contradicted Alain Vigneault’s earlier explanation that Kassian “went to Chicago basically to play hockey,” but only somewhat. After all, Kassian did go to Chicago to play hockey. That’s what he did while he was there. He evens scored a goal. Of course, the reason he had to go to Chicago to play hockey is because whatever he was up to in Vancouver was enough for him to be grounded from playing hockey here.

On Saturday, the Canucks put in their most lacklustre effort of the season, losing to the Edmonton Oilers in less than 8 minutes. It was a demoralizing loss and, with the trade deadline just a couple days away, many Canucks fans are eager to see Mike Gillis shake things up by making a big move.

On Sunday, the Canucks called up Nicklas Jensen and Bill Sweatt from the Chicago Wolves and sent down Zack Kassian and Andrew Gordon.

It would be a mistake to connect these two days together by anything more than chronology. Fans and media alike were quick to call this a desperation move, but the roster movement doesn’t seem to be sparked by the loss in Edmonton. Instead, it looks like this roster move was caused by something that happened before the game even started.

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.

Zack Kassian is a surprisingly soft-spoken guy off the ice. In an interview setting, he’s low-key and fairly reserved. He can be that way on the ice sometimes, which likely contributes to his streakiness. It’s likely that motivation rather than skill will be his major limitation early in his career and it will be Vigneault’s challenge to figure out what motivates him.

Different players require different types of motivation, something Vigneault has spoken about in the past. “I think part of coaching is getting the most you can out of the personnel,” he said in a Q and A with the Vancouver Board of Trade in early 2011, “and that’s getting to know your personnel both on and off the ice and how to handle individuals. You can’t treat everybody the same way but you can treat them fairly. Some guys need to be handled with a little bit of cuddling sometimes and some have to be harped on sometimes. That’s what they want.”

I have a suspicion that cuddling is not the best way to motivate Kassian. Instead, Kassian seems to need something to get him emotionally involved. On Thursday night, Antoine Roussel of the Dallas Stars figured out exactly what gets Kassian motivated: royally piss him off.

Not long ago, the Canucks’ acquisition of a big power forward with a right-handed shot would have resulted in one reaction from fans: finally, someone to play with the Sedins.

It’s a testament to how well Alex Burrows has played with the Sedins that Canucks fans did not have that reaction when the Canucks traded for Zack Kassian. Instead, Kassian was projected as, at best, a second-line winger on the Canucks, someone to play alongside Ryan Kesler and David Booth. At worst, he could be a physical presence on the fourth line.

But now Kassian has been promoted to play on the top line and the early returns are impressive. Kassian leads the Canucks in goals with 5 in 7 games and is, in fact, tied for second in the NHL in goal-scoring. The thing is, most of that goal-scoring hasn’t exactly come as a result of playing with the Sedins, but there’s reason to believe that he will have success with them in the future.

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.

The Canucks really needed this win. It wasn’t just that they were 0-1-1 heading into it. It was much worse than that. As a colleague who will remain nameless because I’m about to make fun of him pointed out to me, they weren’t just winless in their first two. They were 1-4-2 in their last seven, dating back to last postseason. Ah, but I pointed out to him that if we’re just going to trace the Canucks’ record back to arbitrary dates, we should point out that they’re actually 52-26-11 dating back to the beginning of last season. Perhaps, my colleague responded, but they’re a mediocre 1353-1455-391-83 dating back to the beginning of the franchise.

That’s almost 100 games under five hundred. You can see how badly they needed this win. Sure, it’s a big hole to crawl out of, but you’ve got to take these things one game at a time. Tonight was one such game, and I watched this game.

Normally, it is to our great shame that we miss something sort of awesome and another Canucks blog happens upon it first. We do our best to be on top of this stuff. But in this case, we’re not ashamed to admit that this one escaped us the first time around.

Why? Because it means we don’t watch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (No offense if you do watch it. It’s just that we’re #TeamCoCo. Also, when we watch late-night comedy, we like to laugh occasionally. But seriously, no offense.)

However, lucky for all of us here in the Canucks’ blogosphere (also known as the Smylosphere), Jordan Bowman of the Province’s Legion of Blog has been working the Jay Leno beat. Hard. And Monday night, his fervent, completely unexplainable devotion to Leno finally paid off. In honour of the NHL lockout coming to an end, Leno debuted a new gag, titled, “Hockey mouth or meth mouth?”

I think you will recognize the mouth.

Hungry like the Wolves is an ongoing feature on Pass it to Bulis during the lockout, wherein we keep an eye on the Canucks prospects and property currently playing for the Wolves as it’s the closest thing we’re going to get to Canucks hockey for quite some time.

The American Hockey League has suspended Canucks prospect Zack Kassian for one game, but are being remarkably vague about the reason why. Their official press release only indicates that the suspension is “a consequence of his actions during a game at Charlotte on Nov. 6.”

The Wolves, when contacted, indicated that as far as they know, the suspension is for accidentally running into an official on his way off the ice after taking a second period penalty, which sounds relatively innocuous. While pushing or hitting an official would certainly earn a suspension, players accidentally bump into officials all the time while on the ice. It seems certain that there’s more to the story.

Paul LaTour of the Chicago Tribune floated his theory that the suspension is for throwing his stick in the penalty box, hitting the off-ice official and cutting him.

Hungry like the Wolves is an ongoing feature on Pass it to Bulis during the lockout, wherein we keep an eye on the Canucks prospects and property currently playing for the Wolves as it’s the closest thing we’re going to get to Canucks hockey for quite some time.

Hungry like the Wolves is an ongoing feature on Pass it to Bulis during the lockout, wherein we keep an eye on the Canucks prospects and property currently playing for the Chicago Wolves as it’s the closest thing we’re going to get to Canucks hockey for quite some time. When the Canucks’ AHL affiliate flies [...]

In his first professional season, he seemed stuck between being too good for the AHL and not quite good enough for the NHL. While it might have been best for his development to play the full season in the AHL where he could play big minutes, he instead spent a large chunk of the season averaging around 11 minutes in ice time with the Canucks, with minimal success offensively.

Then, the CBA negotiations between the NHL and NHLPA stalled, and a lockout loomed. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Ryan Kesler, who had a fantastic season for the Manitoba Moose.

Wait, did you think I was talking about Zack Kassian? That’s an understandable mistake to make, considering I put his name in the title of the post and used vague personal pronouns in my opening paragraph. Sorry about that.

Today in the every goal series, we take a moment to appreciate the guys who only scored one goal in a Canucks’ uniform in 2011-12.

This is a really strange collection of names, if you think about it, and I think it underscores what a strange year last year was. In 2010-11, most of the one-goal guys were the sorts of guys you’d expect: stay-at-home defencemen (Andrew Alberts) and fourth line call-ups (Mario Bliznak). But in 2011-12, the one-goal guys were Keith Ballard, Mikael Samuelsson, Byron Bitz, Aaron Volpatti, Marc-Andre Gragnani, and Zack Kassian. No one could have predicted that group, either because more was expected of them or because they weren’t expected to end the year here.

But not everybody you see below is unexpected. The Sedins are in almost every clip, to the surprise of no one.

Back in February, Mike Gillis shocked the NHL by trading away one of the best rookies in the league for an unproven power forward prospect. The fact that this came at a time when the Canucks were supposed to be buyers gearing up for the playoffs baffled and even angered a lot of Canucks fans.

Cody Hodgson was seen by a lot of people — including us at PITB — as part of the solution for the scoring issues that hit the Canucks in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final. He made the third line into a scoring line rather than a checking line and improved the second unit powerplay to the point that I suggested he be moved to the first unit when the powerplay was struggling. He was also one of the main reasons the Canucks had a lot of powerplay opportunities early in the season, as he was the best player on the team at drawing penalties.

But my favourite thing that Hodgson did was make goal posts sing with his blistering slap shot. To put it simply, I liked Hodgson a lot.

So when Mike Gillis sent him to Buffalo for Zack Kassian, I was shocked. After all, the dark times had passed for Hodgson and, while still a longshot, he was in the Calder Trophy conversation after 10 points in 11 games in January saw him named the NHL’s Rookie of the Month.

While the swap of two high-end rookies isn’t exactly the sort of thing that can be assessed in a month, the early returns in the shocking trade deadline deal that sent Cody “Dr. Headson” Hodgson to Buffalo for Zack “Mama” Kassian don’t flatter the Canucks.

On the surface, there’s enough there for Sabres blog Sabre Noise to take a cursory glance at the production of the two men since the trade and call it — brace yourselves — a fleecing for Buffalo. Kassian’s been toothless (both figuratively and literally) since arriving in Vancouver. Until his assist on March 30 bumped his point total to 3, his production since the trade matched Cory Schneider’s. Meanwhile, Hodgson has a much sexier 8 points, all of which have come since being promoted to a line with Thomas Vanek 8 games ago.

But the Canucks were well aware that Cody was light years ahead of Kassian offensively. At the end of February, Cody had 33 points to Kassian’s 7. Coaching and management’s concern was that, without some serious sheltering, Hodgson’s defensive deficiencies would undermine his production and make Vancouver easier to play against in the playoffs.

It would appear that these concerns were justified.

There were a number of storylines heading into Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada match-up versus the Buffalo Sabres. There was the obvious one, as Cody Hodgson returned to Vancouver less than one week after being traded to Buffalo, but there was also the undercard of the Olympic re-match between Roberto Luongo and Ryan Miller in the same building where Team Canada won the gold medal two years ago.

Oh yeah, and Christian Ehrhoff returning to Vancouver for the first time since leaving for a bigger contract in the summer. And Alex Sulzer was there.

But it turned out the real storyline was a desperate team battling for a playoff spot coming out firing on all cylinders against a complacent team sitting comfortably in first place. The game was essentially over after 5 minutes, but my job wasn’t. I didn’t just watch the first period, I watched this game.

The Canucks were in playoff form Thursday. How do I know? Because this game bore an eerie resemblance to a playoff game from last June. Let me break it down for you:

After two tough losses on the road, the Canucks came home looking to bounce back. The game was tight, with very little room for error, and the NHL’s top two teams entered the third period locked in a 0-0 tie. The contest appeared headed for overtime until, midway through the third, one of the Canucks’ point men put a shot just wide of the net. It popped off the boards and right onto the stick of a French winger that nobody likes, and he was able to jam the puck inside the post just before the goaltender could get across. Immediately after doing so, he scrambled to the boards to celebrate the game-winner with his linemates while Rogers Arena went nuts.

Yeah. Tonight’s game was effectively a shot-for-shot remake of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. I remember it clear as day, because I, like many of you, watched that game. And then I watched this game.

Mike Gillis surprised everyone Monday with the announcement that beloved nerd Cody Hodgson had been traded to the Buffalo Sabres for budding power winger Zack Kassian. Many simply didn’t know how to take it. Some were sadder than Sad Cody and Sad Keanu put together. Some were angrier than angry Bieksa. Others could only make nonsensical Luongo faces.

Emotions were flying high. (Frankly, it’s a wonder there were no police cruisers overturned. Clearly, the Heart of a Canuck fan re-education campaign is working. We tip our hat to you, kinder, gentler Canuck nation.)

But now, with the benefit of a good night’s sleep behind us, we at PITB thought it might be time to recompose ourselves, gather our wits (obliterated as they were after yesterday’s gruelling all-day chat), apply a little reason to the situation, and weigh the pros and cons.

Heading into the trade deadline, Mike Gillis was expected to be active. It looked like the Canucks, who are currently first place in the NHL, just needed to make a minor move or two to address issues of depth. Instead, Mike Gillis made arguably the biggest trade of the deadline, sending Calder candidate Cody Hodgson to the Buffalo Sabres for burgeoning power forward Zack Kassian.

The move was shocking: there had been little indication that Hodgson was the block and Zack Kassian wasn’t on anyone’s radar in Vancouver. But it wasn’t the only trade that the Canucks made and, when taken as a whole, they do make sense. Let’s take a look.