By Josh Martin, Sports Editor

‘T= Vancouver Canucks are
heading into November with
what looks to be not exactly the
performance they were hoping for in
the month of October. They finished
the month with a record of 4-3-2 and
currently sit at tenth position in the
Western Conference. Even though the
Canucks haven’t started the way they’d
like to, one has to remember that in past
years Roberto Luongo has always kept
the tradition of playing inconsistent
hockey in the first month of the season,
it’s just the way he rolls.

So if Luongo is playing
inconsistent, it’s quite evident that the
Canucks are playing inconsistent as
well. It’s as simple as that. Now with
that being said, in Bobby Lu’s final
game of the month that he dreads,
he had a strong 37 save performance
against the Colorado Avalanche where
his team didn’t entirely show up for
the whole night. It was his second win
of the season in seven games where
he looked a lot like the goaltender that
Vancouver traded for several years
ago, the goaltender that is desperately
needed if the Canucks want to make
it deep into the post-season and the
goaltender that needs to be one of the
best players on the team in every single
game.

Yup, his performance was a good
ending to October and a great start to
November. When Luongo wasn’t in
net, Cory Schneider did a bang up job,
winning both of his games to scores
of 5-1 apiece. Having confidence in
your back-up goalie comes a long way,
especially with Luongo getting so many
starts in a season. It will be nice to see
Schneider play some more games down
the road.

It took a few games but the
Canucks finally found a way of getting
some much needed secondary scoring
from players without the name “Sedin”
stitched onto the back of their jersey.
Ryan Kesler, Mason Raymond, Mikael
Samuelsson and Manny Malhotra
have all been chipping in with Jeff
Tambellini potting in a couple goals on

Canucks poised to kick off
November in style

we

the top line with the Sedin’s. Christian
Erhoff has been contributing as well,
leading all Canucks defensemen in
scoring with six points in nine games.
Erhoff has arguably been the best
defensemen so far on a somewhat
depleted blue line with injuries to
newly acquired defensemen Keith
Ballard and Dan Hamhuis. They are
both expected to return very soon as
well as forward Alex Burrows who is
expected to return in early November.
Burrows’ return in particular will
be a huge lift for the team in all aspects
of the game. The guy can score, hit,
back-check and be an effective penalty
killer. The Sedin twins can’t wait for
their line mate to return which will
shake up the line-up a bit and create
a buzz on the Vancouver streets. One
month is down and seven more to go
before the playoffs begin. The Canucks
have a lot to prove with 73 games
remaining. Who knows what will
happen?

 

i

 

&

Moats,

   

Aa POR

Clemens isn’t a demon
By Garth McLennan

hen the news dropped
that embattled star
pitcher Roger Clemens,

perhaps the greatest pitcher of the
modern age, was being indicted by
a federal grand jury on a number of
charges relating to perjury, justice
obstruction and false statements,
few were surprised. What was
surprising however, was Clemens’
stubborn and continued insistences
of his innocence.

Needless to say, Clemens
pleaded not guilty to the charges,
but few believed him. The old
cowboy, now 48, was battled,
humiliated and maybe even
broken, but certainly not humbled.
No, Clemens has made it crystal
clear that if he’s going down,
he’s going out the same way he

Because he is Roger Clemens.

He’s the guy who has never
believed there was a hitter he
couldn’t strike out, a spot he
couldn’t pick or a game he couldn’t
win. He’s baseball’s Brett Favre; a
cowboy, and love him or hate him,
that’s just the way he’s wired.

We shouldn’t despise Roger
Clemens. Much like Barry
Bonds (a much bigger jerk than
Clemens, who, by all accounts,
was an exceptional teammate),
he’s become the face of the steroid
era in baseball, the representation
of the deceit and deception that
plagued and polluted America’s
pastime for so many years.
However, steroids or not, Clemens
is one of the best pitchers of
all time, one of the single most
entertaining superstars baseball has
ever produced, and a true five star

pitched during his 23 seasons ace.
in the majors, with fire, tenacity Much like Rodriguez,
and a point blank refusal to McGuire and all the others, he’s a

ever, no matter how bleak the
circumstances, back down.

Did Roger Clemens use
steroids? Probably, but even
if he did (and let’s face it, the
evidence compiled against him
and supporting the allegations that
he did indeed chemically enhance
his on-field performance is pretty
damning), he most certainly wasn’t
the only one to do so. After all,
names just as big and as bright
as the good ol’ boy from Dayton,
Ohio have come clean about
their history of not being clean,
guys such as Alex Rodriguez,
Mark McGuire and Andy Pettite,
Clemens’ best friend.

So why the stubborn refusal
from Clemens? Why, after the
admissions of guilt from a guy like
McGuire, who infamously decreed
that he “wasn’t here to talk about
the past” at that notorious Congress
hearing in 2005 and finally
relented, admitted his history of
steroid use and since has been
largely forgiven, would Clemens
still, after all these years, defend a
position and a reputation that has
been, to say the least, shredded into
pieces?

There is a reason, and it can be
boiled down to five simple words:

product of his era, and while that
doesn’t make what he allegedly
did right by any stretch of the
imagination, it should take away
the notion that he’s the face of
everything wrong with baseball,
because he’s not.

If Clemens had just admitted
his guilt, real or otherwise,
apologized and moved on, the rest
of the world would have done so
as well, and the media would have
moved on to some other pariah.
But, that just isn’t who he is. He’s
Roger Clemens, and the rest of the
world be damned.

 

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