Recent Skid, Heritage Classic Loss Exposes Lack of Depth for the Vancouver Canucks

During this season's Preseason Prognosis, I commented on the Vancouver Canucks that while the Henrik and Daniel Sedin have historically carried the team to success in the past, their ability to do so has been fading over the past few seasons. Despite some man-games lost this season, it appears that things are as ugly as they initially seemed in British Columbia.

Since the calendar flipped to 2014, the Canucks have been caught up in a freefall down the standings. They have gone 5-15-3 in the new year and are currently in the midst of an 11-game stretch with a 1-9-1 record, beginning on January 27. Through that date they have been overwhelmed by opponents, being outscored 32-15. They lost by a single goal twice in that stretch and the lone overtime loss came in a shootout against Minnesota on Friday following a 1-0 win, their only one, over St. Louis.

Thoughts Following the Conclusion of This Year's Outdoor Games

The outdoor portion of the NHL season has finally come to a close. Chicago embarrassed Pittsburgh on Saturday at Soldier Field and Vancouver hosted Ottawa for the Heritage Classic on Sunday for what turned out to be...an indoor game.

Yes, you read that right. The Heritage Classic was held at BC Place right across the street from the Canucks' Rogers Arena. The venue mostly accommodates Major League Soccer and Canadian Football League events but opened its doors to over 50,000 hockey fans for the all-Canada stick-and-puck spectacle. The period (no, not exclamation point) to the relatively underwhelming play on the ice, however, was the fact that the retractable roof remained closed through the duration thanks to continuous rain.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group C

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group B

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Jersey Review: Group A

With Men's Ice Hockey starting this morning in Sochi, Two Minutes for Typing will be passing out judgement on the aesthetics of the uniforms. Who wears their colours the best and who will we be hoping to see early exits solely due to sporting world-class eyesores? Let's take a look at what we'll be looking at for the next two-and-a-half weeks and apply our patented rating system.

Martin Brodeur: Sit Down, Man

As many of you likely know, career New Jersey Devil Martin Brodeur has already joined the pantheon of great goaltenders in NHL history. He first made his debut in the 1991-92 season, playing 4 games while going 2-1-0 (0 is ties, remember this was long before the Bettman point was introduced) and by 1995-96 became the uncontested starter in the Devils crease after backstopping the team to a sweep of Detroit in the Stanley Cup Finals the season prior. Through his career, Brodeur would visit the Finals four more times, most recently and forgettably in 2011-12, and would come out with the big prize twice, in 1999-2000 against Dallas and 2002-03 against Anaheim.

Martin Brodeur owns records mostly due to his inhuman body of work. During the peak of his career between '95-96 through 2009-10, a span of 14 seasons, he logged time in 985 games which comes out to an average workload of 70.36 games per season. If you take out the two seasons he played fewer than 70 games (67 in '96-97 and 31 in '08-09) in that span, his average leaps up to 73.92 games per season. Long story short, that is absolutely insane.

Love Is A Battlefield, and So Is The Metropolitan

Remember back in October and early November when the Metropolitan Division was kind of like that carton of eggs you bought at the store, brought home, and realised that just about all of the eggs were busted open already? We all had a good, hearty laugh (or cry, depends on where you live I guess) over it early on, but it appears that we are finally starting to make an omelet.

While the Atlantic Division was chugging along to start the season, their neighbors in the Metro were struggling to even stay relevant. If we look at the standings on December 1, the second place Washington Capitals, with 30 points, would not even qualify for a Wild Card spot in the Atlantic. Whether the Atlantic is starting to falter or the Metropolitan is starting to catch up, things are starting to get interesting out in the East.