It's Pavol Time!

by Jes

Now that the shock of the news of Crown Prince Pavol Demitra (Our lord, Jedi Master, and archbishop of the Church of the Shiny Head) signing a 2-year deal with the Canucks has abated somewhat, I am composed enough to make a coherent post without going too OMGfanboy on your asses.

On the hockey side, this deal is a good one for the Canucks. A 2 year investment at $4mil is both reasonable for the cost and not going to put the Canucks in any sort of bind.

Compared Demitra to Naslund and you can see that the Canucks will get similar production, at the very least, for $2M/season cheaper AND not have a guy who sulks all the frickin time.

Demitra can play both center and on the wing (where he is better), can play well in all situations, which gives Alain Vigneault a lot of flexibility in his constant line juggling. At least now we have a secondary offensive threat, although the Canucks still need at least one more talented and proven forward to really get serious about a playoff run.

Unlike James Mirtle, I don’t see Demitra as potential captain material to replace Naslund. While Demo was one of the rotating flavour-of-the-month Kapitans for the Wild, his personality isn't really suited for the position.


On the non-hockey side, this deal, obviously, has me more content than Richard Simmons in a room full of obese housewives. Never did I ever think Pavol Demitra would END UP IN VANCOUVER!!!!!1111111oneoneone

*sorry*

Then, suddenly, we get Mike Gillis as an agent, the pieces fall together ... it's all so sudden.

For years, I've struggled to have much of a real emotional attachment to my hometown club as there have been so few players that I've actually liked all that much: Trevor Linden, Jiri Slegr, and Jan Bulis v2.0 is pretty much all there was.

It didn't help that the Canucks had many players I really disliked, such as Bertuzzi, Ruutu, Cooke, and Tarantula Head. I cheered more for the laundry than the players, and my fandom was never quite as deep as it was during the days of Lumme, Smyl, Linden v1.0, Captain Kirk, and Pavel Bure.

Wouldn't you find it a bit hard if your absolute favourite player was off somewhere else?

Having Pavol on the Canucks will permit me to invest more of myself into the team, and have my heart stomped on even more so than it usually is by this frickin club. It's hard to be a Pavol fan when he's playing for a hated division rival, or for the bland LA Kings.

For my entire Canucks fandom, I have rare seriously considered buying a sweater of any sort. It wasn't just because some of the designs sucked (the first Killer Whale sweater, ftl), but because by the time I actually had $$ to purchase such a luxury good, I, instead, bought a DEMITRA Blues sweater, for obvious reasons.

Now? I'm going to be hunting hard for a good place to get my #38 Canucks sweater to wear. I expect few around here will have the same, and I can laugh at them as their BERTUZZI, NASLUND, and COOKE sweaters are merely retro crap.

To all of you haters, such as Zanstorm over at Waiting for Stanley, you are not invited to my Pavol Demitra-themed Christmas bash this December.

You know who else will be happy to have Pavol? Roberto Luongo.