Erik Rolfsen

It ends with a whimper, and a whole lot of bangs

I don’t have much to say about the hockey. Nobody cost us the game. Nobody stepped up to make a difference. 

At the second intermission, the Canucks had 20 minutes left in their dream and three goals to make up. There must have been some sort of fiery pep talk in that dressing room, or at least a long period of intense, introspective silence. When they came out and started the third period exactly as they had finished the previous two, it was clear to me that they had suffered too much attrition to change a thing. No gas, no Cup.

Time ticked down, an empty-net goal was scored, and I left the house in a hurry. I stopped briefly on the sidewalk to share the disappointment with a young couple from three doors down. After a short chat, I explained that I worked at The Province and had to be on my way.

“I’ve got to go back to the newsroom now and hope there’s no riot.”

The best I can say about the loss is that at least I was used to it. For a lot of teens and young men among the 100,000-plus who gathered downtown, it was the first time. I suppose they didn’t know how to react. But they’d all heard stories of 1994, and those stories had settled into their collective subconscious. Now, those stories were whispering that rioting was an option. And when the professional anarchists began taking off their Canucks jerseys (likely with tags still on) and torching them in the street, the only thing the amateurs needed was an invitation to participate. The first overturned car was it.

There’s nothing quite like arriving in a newsroom when the shit’s starting to hit the fan. If you’re unaware that news is breaking, it becomes quite clear before you’ve taken three steps inside. People are moving at twice their normal weekday pace, and shouting across cubicles has displaced all other forms of communication.

On this occasion, I had heard game broadcaster John Shorthouse mention reports of some nastiness outside the arena during my 15-minute drive in to work. Sure enough, the first reporter I saw when I arrived had just come in from the street and said a car was on fire. As I set up my computer, we heard somebody had fallen from the Rogers Arena viaduct. It was on.

The next five hours were a blur. On the web desk, we each quickly found a niche; Katie working the social media accounts, Cheryl compiling reporters’ dispatches into coherent stories, Dharm attacking all the video footage that came in. I manned the live blog that we had set up at the top of our home page, pushing out our reports, photos and videos, and anything worthwhile that our eyewitnesses or competitors were coming up with, in as close to real time as possible.

Our live-blogging tool lets you see how many people are watching at any given time. It started at around 700 — about the same number of people who tuned in when news broke that Premier Campbell was resigning. As I worked, I kept glancing up at the number: 1,000… 2,000… 3,000… 4,000… 5,000. It stops counting at 5,000.

I wish I could tell you my reaction as the pictures and videos rolled in and I started to actually see what was happening in my city: black smoke, burning cars, broken glass, bloodied heads. But there wasn’t a lot of time for reflection. Maybe a quick head shake every once in a while, then on to the next task.

We had half a dozen reporters out in the chaos. Cell phone service was spotty, and we got a lot of information straight from their Twitter feeds. One got hit with a gas bomb, another had a beer bottle explode off her shoulder. One couldn’t take the tear gas and went home early, another described what the gas felt like and went looking for the next looting scene. We’d lose touch with people for 25 minutes and start to wonder what had happened to them, then they’d turn up on Twitter at a new flashpoint. They reported. Occasionally, they judged. Could we blame them? They were disgusted.

Sometime around 1:15 a.m., just as things were getting under control, I looked up from my screen and saw the five or six reporters — including a female summer intern who’s been with us all of three weeks — slowly file into the newsroom with red in their eyes and smoke in their clothes. I stared in awe, and started to slowly clap my hands. The rest of the newsroom followed suit. It had been a bad night for Canuck fans, a worse night for Vancouverites, but a great night for the Province newsroom.

So now here I am, just one of several hundred people trying to explain in a web article what it all means. I’ve read more opinions in the past two days than I care to count. Many writers have made their points with eloquence and certainty, but those aren’t the ones I find myself nodding in agreement with. I believe the ones who don’t have a clue.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the best way to get past this would be for Vancouver to host a Game 7 sometime around June 15, 2012. The debate still rages about the makeup of Wednesday night’s crowd, but I believe the experienced anarchists and bridge-and-tunnel thugs were far outnumbered by regular Canuck fans — labourers, undergrads, privileged prep-schoolers — who had been wound tight for a month, then got liquored up and lost their minds. Before Wednesday, those guys had never had their riot. They had only heard about it and wondered what it must be like. Now they know. It might have been a thrill, but I doubt they’re so proud of it that they’d do it all again next year.

That’s my take on the riot. I’m sorry I don’t have more of a take on the game, but that’s the spring of 2011 for you: I started a hockey blog and a riot broke out.

Ready for the end

I can’t sleep. This is ridiculous.

It’s not all because of the game. I do have a three-year-old who’s been rolling around in our bed like a pig on a spit, only this pig sticks a hoof into your kidney every once in a while. But then I’m awake, I remember the game is tonight, and I get to wondering. Next thing I know, I’m blogging in the laundry room at 3:30 a.m.

I’m ready for this to end. It’s fun, but it’s exhausting. My job is partly to blame. Other fans probably have a little trouble concentrating at work on game days because they’re thinking about the Canucks. When the team goes this deep in the playoffs, my work becomes the Canucks. We monitor discussions among fans on our website. We seek out the videos they’re creating on YouTube. We read what they’re saying in Boston. We wait for reports from practices, from news conferences, from airports. We compile information about public viewing areas and think about how the crowd will react if they win, if they lose, and how we’ll cover it. I’m in on all of this. Then I drive home (with sports talk radio on, of course) and watch the games. Win or lose I get up early to blog about the Canucks, go to work, and do it all again — all while coping with the same playoff stress as an accountant or realtor who has been a fan since the ’70s. It has been two months of this.

The last kidney kick got me thinking about yesterday’s quote from Ryan Kesler. They asked him about about his offence drying up, and he said: “If we win we become legends and I don’t think anybody worries about that I have one point in six games.”

He’s right, of course. I just wasn’t sure the players knew that. I knew they all wanted to win the Stanley Cup, but before Kesler I had never heard any of them acknowledge that doing so would give them a status above that of any other athlete who’s competed for this city in 125 years (I’ll stand at centre ice in Cyclone Taylor Arena and say that). And that it would last forever, because there can only be one first time. Players aren’t supposed to think about that stuff, let alone talk about it. Kesler did, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

At this point, it probably doesn’t matter. I think of another quote I read yesterday, uttered by then-Canucks assistant coach Ron Smith in 1994: “Here’s the thing about elimination. It’s a different feeling. You charge up the hill, knowing you’re looking in the face of disaster, but you charge anyway — and if it’s your time, if your name’s on the bullet, so be it.”

Is this the hill the Canucks want to die on?

You bet it is.

Wednesday will make Monday seem carefree

The realist in me had given the Canucks about a 30-per-cent chance of winning Game 6 in Boston, but the hopeful fan in me had nearly convinced himself by game time that Monday would be the night. Finding shelter from the anticipatory vibe that swept through the city during the day was impossible. It was as though the crowd knew something I didn’t know.

Now, I will remember: the realist is usually right.

It turned out that those dreadful 8-1 and 4-0 losses in Boston were no flukes. TD Garden simply makes the Canucks crumble, and they crumbled spectacularly again last night, allowing four goals in the first 10 minutes of a 5-2 loss. It was actually their best game in Boston; unfortunately, it was Roberto Luongo’s worst. He made it to the third goal, 8:35 into the game, and that was two minutes more than he should have played if the Canucks were serious about winning this series in six. Cory Schneider was again fantastic in relief, and backstopped the Canucks to a 2-2 draw through 50 minutes of what was essentially garbage time.

A significant chunk of the Rogers Arena crowd had bailed out by the second intermission. In the upper deck, my wife and I fantasized about a Canucks comeback. It was all we could do. We imagined those people in their cars on their way home, listening to John Shorthouse call a four-goal third period, followed by a win in overtime. The arena would explode. It would be the greatest hockey night of our lives.

Henrik Sedin scored a beautiful power-play goal in the first minute of the third period to make it 4-1. Still just a fantasy at that point, but the Canucks raised their sticks again about a minute later and the arena burst into a screaming blizzard of white towels. The crowd was frothing at a Bruins lead that had suddenly become the most dangerous in hockey.

Or had it?

Upon further review, the puck had hit the post and never crossed the goal line. Fantasizing had been fun, but the realist is usually right.

And so the weirdest Stanley Cup final in memory — at one point last night, the team with the chance to raise the Cup had been outscored 18-6 in the series — will end downtown on Wednesday night. That prospect will probably unsettle any Vancouverite who was around in 1994, and I can assure you the volume and intensity of emotion surrounding this year’s Stanley Cup run is greater than it was then. As tight as the city was wound on Monday, Wednesday will make it seem carefree. In fact, the mood downtown had already shifted from disappointment to excitement within half an hour of last night’s game.

You learn a lot in the storytelling business about what makes great drama.

Conflict? Check.

Setbacks? Check.

High stakes? Check.

Uncertain outcome? Check.

It’s all there now, and just about every reason we have for optimism is balanced by a corresponding reason for cold fear. The fact that Roberto Luongo will start Game 7 in goal on Wednesday night happens to be both. He has shut out the Bruins twice in this series. His two best games of the playoffs have eliminated opponents. And yet, he will play the entire first period just one soft goal away from a complete team collapse.

Game 7 is on its way, and 48 hours of unmatchable theatre has begun.

June 14, 1994

This takes me back, waking up in the morning knowing the Canucks can win the Stanley Cup in the evening.

The last time was a gorgeous spring day, going on summer. My playoff beard was almost as long as Trevor Linden’s. I had the day off from the restaurant, which gave me plenty of time to pull together my last-minute shows of support. The old black Canucks T-shirt was no longer adequate, so I bought my first Canucks jersey: home white, which I still have. I also made a Stanley Cup, which I don’t.

You can find everything you need to make a replica Stanley Cup in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant. The base was an overturned five-gallon bucket cleaned of canola oil. On top of that, a four-litre sour cream bucket. Then a 16-oz plastic container used for take-out salsa. And for the bowl, a standard tortilla chip basket. Wrap it all up in duct tape, don some white gloves and you’re the keeper of the Cup.

I had become used to cars honking downtown after Canuck wins, but it was something new to be be bombarded with honks while carrying the Stanley Cup down King Edward Avenue in the afternoon sunshine four hours before faceoff.

I hooked up with my girlfriend (we’ve been married since the Keenan years) and a few other friends. With no plan, we headed downtown early, but not so early that it was easy to find seating for five in front of a TV. Heading down Burrard Street we spotted the Century Plaza hotel, with a little known bar in the basement called the Mardi Gras. I had never been in it before. Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we could see it was almost empty and there were comfortable chairs under the 27-inch screen. I set the Stanley Cup on a table. Beer soon followed. We were holed up underground for the entire game — as was much of the Vancouver Police Department, a couple of blocks north.

Ready for Game 7: Lora (my wife), Wendy, Stuart and Craig.

Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final carries such a sense of finality. You’ve been on this ride for two long months (remember when Chicago’s Dave Bolland was day-to-day with a concussion?), and you know it’s all going to be over in a few hours. You just don’t know whether you’re going to have a Stanley Cup, or nothing but disappointment and memories.

The New York Rangers scored first. Somebody has to, I guess, but it felt awfully bleak to go down 2-0 by the end of the first period. Linden’s goal early in the second period cranked up the tension, but when Mark Messier made it 3-1, reality entered the bar — kind of like an ex you’ve managed to avoid for eight weeks. What business did we have thinking our Canucks could win a Stanley Cup against one of the NHL’s storied franchises?

Linden scored another, early in the third. Three to two. Game on.

The tension of the third period was hard to bear. Kirk McLean would have to stop everything or it would all be over, and Mike Richter would have to make a mistake. The only mistake he made was letting Nathan Lafayette’s shot whiz by him to hit the post — which really isn’t a mistake at all.

The Rangers survived. We slumped in our seats and finished off our beers as the Canucks were quickly forgotten and the live broadcast of Messier’s canonization commenced.

We shuffled out of the hotel and stopped on the sidewalk to consider the rest of our evening. It was still light out. The night was young. We weren’t usually the types to head home at nine o’ clock, but something in us had died. We had spent two months in bars, restaurants and crowded living rooms, and there was nothing left to which we could raise a glass. So we turned south on Burrard Street for home.

Had we made the opposite decision and turned north, we would have walked straight into one of the ugliest scenes in Vancouver history. Instead, I was oblivious to what was happening downtown until I turned on Sports Page to relive the game at 11 p.m., and then I was stunned. John Shorthouse and Alan Carter, who normally co-hosted U.News at 23:30 immediately after Sports Page, were doing a live hit from atop a building above Robson Steet, their voices unsteady and eyes red from pepper spray. Gas bombs billowed up from the street below them where riot police were marching. They looked scared.

A week or so later, Carter came into the restaurant and sat in my section. I don’t remember what he ordered (Kay Whitmore always had the chicken burrito), but I do remember a little joke I made. After setting his plate down in front of him, I brandished a wooden pepper mill from under my arm and said, “Would you like a little pepper spray with that?”

Carter didn’t think it was funny.

Luongo’s shutout stitches Canuck Nation back together … until the next time

Canucks Nation is one again.

The disastrous trip to Boston, during which the Canucks lost 8-1 and 4-0 to toss away their series lead, was pitting fan against fan, diehard loyalist against bandwagon jumper. A series made infamous by finger-pointing on the ice was now producing plenty of it off the ice.

Then last night, back at Rogers Arena, Roberto Luongo shut out the Bruins and Maxim Lapierre squeezed one past Tim Thomas to put the Canucks one win away from their first Stanley Cup. All was well again.

For two days, Luongo had been the focal point of this fan-on-fan conflict. My daughter and I were at Rogers Arena to hear the roar go up when Alain Vigneault decided Luongo was done in Game 4, and Cory Schneider appeared on the big screen, strapping on his mask. Word of this cheering got out, and the infighting across the city began.

A certain segment of Canuck fans insists that goalies be close to perfect. Narrow, low-scoring losses are allowed, but bad games are not. If a goalie has a bad game at a particularly important time, he simply is not the answer and never will be. Luongo’s brilliant Game 7 double-overtime win against Chicago wasn’t enough to convince these people, nor were his 53 saves in the Game 5 series clincher against San Jose. The doubters stayed quiet for a while after that, but pounced as soon as Boston gave them an opportunity.

The loyalists tend to overreact, too. A lot of them had misinterpreted the crowd’s reaction when Luongo got hooked. That cheer at Rogers Arena didn’t necessarily mean all those people had written off Luongo; some of them had, but I think most simply felt bringing in Schneider was the right move at the time, and it absolutely was. Nobody wants to sit through another 8-1 loss, and that’s where the game was headed.

I think Luongo is a great goalie who has bad games. Sometimes those bad games come in important games. But in these playoffs, the games in which he’s performed superbly have been more important than the ones in which he’s done the opposite. Friday’s Game 5 shutout was an example.

All day, the stakes seemed pretty clear: the winner of Game 5 would very likely win the Stanley Cup. A Boston win would force the Canucks to win Game 6 in a ridiculously hostile arena where they had just been outscored 12-1 over two games. That wasn’t going to happen. A Canucks win would mean the President’s Trophy winners were back, and had recovered their uniforms from those slow-footed imposters who wore them in Boston. They would then have two chances, including one at home, to win a single game.

And that’s where we are now. Alex Edler is hitting people like it’s early in the Chicago series. A 21-year-old rookie named Chris Tanev is bringing the smoothness and poise the Canucks lost when Dan Hamhuis got injured. Lapierre is doing his best impression of Nashville-series Ryan Kesler. And all the games from here on in are absolutely huge, which means Luongo should be just fine.

One more win, and all the fingers point at the sky.

Canuck meltdowns: One of the great spectacles in sport

I’m not even sure what to make of these blowouts anymore. Canuck meltdowns have become one of the great spectacles in sport, like the Super Bowl or the climb up Col du Tourmalet in the Tour de France. Actually, last night’s 8-1 loss in Boston was more like the descent from Tourmalet, in terms of altitude lost over a very short period of time. All that was missing was the crazy man in the devil suit.

But does the magnitude of these losses really mean anything? We saw two such calamities in the Chicago series, and then in Game 6 it was like they never happened. Last night’s Game 3 might turn this Stanley Cup final into a long, bloody fortnight, but it could just as easily turn out to be the ‘1’ in a 4-1 series win for the Canucks. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that if hockey were curling, the Canucks would have shaken hands late in the second period last night. Unfortunately, NHL rules require them to ice a team for the full 60 minutes.

The game started well enough, with the Bruins bringing the energy you’d expect from a team down 2-0 and playing at home for the first time in the series. The Canucks fended them off, and Aaron Rome settled the TD Garden down considerably when he knocked Nathan Horton cold with a late hit at the Canucks’ blueline about five minutes in. Horton left the building on a stretcher, Rome left the game, and when Boston got nothing from their five-minute power play I really didn’t think they’d overcome the humiliation.

But winning the second-period faceoff was the last thing that would go right for the Canucks. The puck went back to Edler, who broke his stick trying pass it up ice. Boston intercepted and scored 11 seconds into the period. Their second goal, four minutes later, was a clean one on the power play. The real killer was Brad Marchand’s goal midway through the period. He tipped a puck along the right boards and beat Ryan Kesler on the outside before crossing in front of the net and outwaiting Roberto Luongo to score up high from a sharp angle. When a Selke Trophy finalist with Kesler’s skating ability is getting bypassed like that, it’s not going to be your night.

I would have removed Luongo after David Krejci’s 4-0 goal with about four minutes left in the second period. The game had become unwinnable, and nobody competes more casually than Luongo when a game is unwinnable. I’m sure he’ll be back in form when the score is tied again at the start of Game 4, but I would have let Cory Schneider finish it off. With Luongo in net, the third period we got was inevitable.

I stopped keeping track of the score at about 5-0. I know Jannik Hansen got a goal in there somewhere. Kesler fought Dennis Seidenberg. A couple of Bruins taunted Canucks with fingers in the face, making a liar of coach Claude Julien who had said in a pre-game news conference that such behaviour was a Canucks thing, and that his organization was better than that.

The Boston crowd got the “Bruins hockey” they’ve been waiting for — a big, bruising win over a team they’ve quickly come to despise. Whether this changes the series, I don’t know, but the hit on Horton has a lot in common with the Raffi Torres hit on Brent Seabrook that Chicago credited for its near-comeback in Round 1.

Which reminds me — the Canucks have now been outscored 10-5 in the series. They were outscored 22-16 by Chicago in the first round. If they do win the Stanley Cup, will they be the first team to do it while being outscored in two series along the way?