This Week in Anguish

This week in anguish: - Ever keen to emulate his NHL heroes, Tristan decided to try out this fun new Covid protocol he'd been hearing so much about. - This meant we hadn't recorded in two semi-meaningful weeks, leading to this episode having a pretty prodigious conversational PSI. - You know how people complain about coaches ruining the game with too much structure? Think of this episode as a prot...

This week in anguish: - Breaking down all of Bouce Broudeau's win-the-weeks. - "Hope, persusade, whatever," and other inspirational advice for Patrik Allvin. - Beating the Maple Leafs at franchise records we have carefully hand-selected. - Checking in on the miraculous regular season finish of the 2001/02 Canucks. - Spencer Martin and our expensive goalie severance packages. - Chase Gray saves the...

This week in anguish: - Is a Frankenstein's miracle of audio stitchery after  one of us had issues with their recording. (It was Tristan. It's always Tristan.) If it seems like some sentences end a bit before they should - We cemented our eternal Connecticut Whale credentials in truly Canuckticut fashion by losing a heartbreaking, do-or-die final game to a bunch of jerks from Boston. - Ardella has...

This week in anguish: - It finally hits us that the homestand, this season, and maybe even this core are in danger of dying with a whimper. - Like a stone plooshing into a pond, this realization ripples out into three wavefronts of worry, each one more sacrilegious than the last. - We say goodbye to Tyler, tally the Travises, and tie our hopes, once again, around Troy. - Like light from a dying st...

This week in anguish: - Unimaginably, the Canucks (and Brad Hunt) have won yet another week. - Do you know who Nils is, Bruce? Tread carefully. - JT Miller rockets up the body language power rankings. - The paltry archaeological evidence of Dancing Demko. - The Canucks' new Pride jersey, more comments on the Black History Month jersey, and a plea for 41 jerseys a year. - Claude Vilgrain played 145...

This week in anguish: - Winning the week while protecting Christopher Tanev's face and Jacob Markström's pride (and ignoring the ongoing descent to hell in New Jersey) - Ardella slyly coins a wonderful phrase. "At one point there was a scrumble in front of the goalie." Delightful. - Old Man Jannik and the case of the plastic shells. - We talk Black History Month in various forms, including appreci...

This week in anguish: - Olympic revelry turns quickly into a search for the Canucks' new (or additional?) mental performance coach. - The Canucks' front office is more available than ever, and we extract insights. Among the most superficial and tangential: Patrick Allvin is the future of ASMR, and Carey Price had the most horrific ears mask of all time.  - The view from Section 307 as the boys Eey...

This week in anguish: - Despite winning the week, we fear we are living in the twilight of the idols. We love our new management group and their putative vision, but who will be the first to go once Jim starts to philosophize with a hammer? - Perhaps, if we all just close our eyes and misunderstand Bayern Munich's slogan hard enough, we can all stay as one big happy family after all.  - Welcome Ca...

This week in anguish: - Podz and Högs both get a night in or around the pressbox, and in the latter case we strain to avoid using the term "pork scratchings". - Tallying Bruce's winning weeks. - Huge Hughes news, and a rare point of controversy as we debate player travel during the All-Star break. - Like so many others, we unhinge our jaws and stare agape at just how badly Rocky Wirtz and Gary Bet...

This week in anguish: - Is going description-less for the time being as I'm uploading it eight seconds before having to go to work. - Give it a listen! All shall be revealed. 

This week in anguish: - The boys pulled off a successful-on-our-terms road trip and a tremendously gutsy overtime loss to the Panthers, with Petey looking more and more like himself...so we focus on Petey's less-than-stellar shootout attempt, and move-less attempts in general. - We welcome Rachel Doerrie to the fold with our patended mixture of over-familiarity, hyper-scrutiny, and the belief that...

This week in anguish: - Begins with twenty-five minutes of handwringing over the state of our Petey. Basically, we fret-manifested his scoring outburst later that morning, no big deal. - Breaking down our goal expectations and making sure the Boudreau bounce doesn't descend into a Desjardins dribble.   - "This town ain't big enough for the both of us," said Probity to Competitive Advantage.  - Why...

This week in anguish: - To paraphrase the dearly departed Jim Benning: "Why isn't anyone talking about Dennis Kearns?" We remedy that in an exhaustive yet bracingly brief retrospective of significant Canuck rearguards.  - Ardella dusts off the Canucks Trophy Case, and takes us from the ballyhooed heights of Harts and Lindsays to the depths of the Mark Messier Leadership Award.  - Tristan gets his...

This week in anguish: - Five hundred! Mediocrity never tasted so sweet. Tristan defends Tanner Pearson, JT Miller censors himself for Ardella's benefit, good chaos, and other thoughts on the OT win vs Anaheim. - Dmitri Zlodeyev is our entry point to From Russia With Love, Ardella's half quiz, half retrospective segment on the finest Canucks you can find west of Kamchatka.  - Friendship power ranki...

This week in anguish: - Betcha forgot about the plight of those plucky '01-'02 Canucks. Well, they didn't forget about you. - Observations deriving from the recent mic'ings up of Messrs. Garland and Miller.  - Mocking the prognosticators at the end of Carolina's Rutherford era. - The Smyl Files: The Coaching Years - How Did We Not Know when the Steamer first steamt? - We take one hangdog look back...

This week in anguish: - Was recorded at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, which explains a) why we didn't mention anything about Covid once again stalking the Canucks, and b) our razor-sharp wits. - We go through the tumultuous week in fine detail, bursting all Joy's grapes upon our palates fine until we find the one that turns to ash in our mouths. Then we focus on that one quite a bit, admittedly. - Exte...

This week in anguish: - Has achieved peak irrelevance by recording a 1½ hour audio interpretation of a franchise listlessly circling the drain, entirely unaware that massive, long-overdue changes were a few hours away. - Wait - weren't the Abbotsford Canucks supposed to be good at least? - Ardella has a new Google search term emotional temperature: jokes. - We crunch the numbers on Petey's generos...

This week in anguish: - We float in a numb purgatory, suffering ever new and ever more bad occurrences, while never getting the cathartic release of the consequences of those occurrences. - In what months are general managers most likely to be fired, and how many NHL games are they most likely to have played in? Behold the dual missing links in our managerial puzzle. - A serious media spat between...

This week in anguish: - Jim Benning, recognizing that we are kinesthetic learners, punches us while we're down with a demonstration of just what a losing culture really looks like. - We want owners who will empower this team to finally win the Stanley Cup, or, in perpetual lieu of that, we want owners we can feel good about. We are often told to be thankful we have local owners. Who are these guys...

This week in anguish: - Was recorded before the latest loss to the Ducks, but that doesn't really change anything, does it? - Ardella surveys the history and success rate of midseason coaching changes, for no reason in particular. - Tristan delves into the archives to get a closer look at when Pat Quinn came down from the rafters and re-zipped up his track suit...for no reason in particular. - Emi...

This week in anguish: - We finally talk about people finally talking about the Brad Aldrich case. Points include our flippant ignorance of Kyle Beach from 2008-2021, Bo Horvat and Antoine Roussel's excellent comments on the issue, and even some grudging praise for the Boston Bruins. You heard it here once, folks. - Ardella flashes her black metallic VIP library card and heads deep into the stacks...

This week in anguish: - Already, we stand mired in a sub-mediocre mess, and debate whose bits of the muck are whose.  - Our heroes returned . Be careful what you wish for.  - We take a deep dive into the Quintology , a 1992-1995, high-concept, medium-budget series of themed team and player portraits.  - Ardella fires up the Statulator and tracks historically inept season-opening gambits.   Thanks...

This week in anguish: - We've made our first foray down the I-5, and what have we learned? Ray Ferraro is working for the enemy, Tod Leiweke understands us better than anyone from CSE has in years, and Tristan mounts a spirited defence of arenas with windows. - Seriously, all the best arenas have windows. From the venerable swoops of the Yale Whale , to SC Bern's transparent Postfinance Arena , it...

This week in anguish: - We are yet again grateful that the Canucks long ago jettisoned their "this is what we live for" slogan. While it's true, it's a bit too depressing to contemplate at the moment. Why not play a round of Deficiency Whack-a-Mole with Ardella, instead? - Four games in, and the cracks are already forming in the foundation. We watched. They wilted. We whinge. - Jonathan Dahlen and...

This week in anguish: - Ardella is experiencing a bout of PPDS - Premature Preseason Depression Syndrome - after suffering six separate deflations in the span of a week. - Tristan tries to square the circle of being told that hockey players are simultaneously hyper-competitive maniacs and cagey veterans pacing themselves through a meaningless preseason. - We mourn the loss of Jonah Gadjovich, embl...