By Josh Martin, Sports Editor ctober is always one of the top months of the year, with Thanksgiving, Halloween and of course the start of the NHL season. It is quite frankly almost as exciting as waking up when you're a toddler on Christmas day, running down the stairs and seeing what kind of goodies Santa has left you under the good ol’ Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The Vancouver Canucks have completed their pre-season and by the time this article is published they will have already kicked off their 40th annual regular season. A lot of pressure has been piling onto Vancouver for being the favourite team to win the Stanley Cup with such a complete line-up and arguably the best defence squad in the league. Dan Hamhuis, Kevin Bieksa, Keith Ballard, Christian Erhoff, Sami Salo and Alex Edler make up the core six man group with Aaron Rome and Andrew Alberts filling in the number seven and eight holes. Now all the Canucks have to do is live up to all the hype that has been surrounding them, which is a lot easier said than done. The Canucks have made a few last minute necessary adjustments to the line-up as well as a couple of new additions to the team that include signing Peter Schaefer and adding Andrew Peters and Nathan Paetsch. Schaefer has turned into one of the top stories of the Canucks preseason. He has been re-united with the Canucks after a successful professional tryout in the off season after not playing in the NHL for a couple of years. The 33 year old looked pretty solid in his play during the preseason, considering that he will either play on the third or fourth line, with three points and finishing a plus- 1. He and former Canuck fan favourite Brendan Morrison were in the same boat, both on professional tryouts, but Morrison left disappointed, without a contract signing with the Canucks. However his play didn’t go unnoticed 20 Canuck fans. Here. We. Go. and before he knew it he was signing a contract with the Calgary Flames which now makes him a Northwest rival. That means that Morrison will meet up with the team that let him go eight times throughout the season. The Canucks also got rid of Shane O’Brien in a trade with the Nashville Predators after they waived the often- troubled defenseman to the Manitoba Moose. Alberts and O’Brien were fighting for the same position as the number sixth defensemen but O’Brien got the short end of the stick ending his two year stint with the squad. Fourth liner Darcy Hordichuk was also involved in a trade which moved him to the Florida Panthers in exchange for left winger Andrew Peters who is definitely not a goal scorer with only seven points in 229 games. He is mostly known for his huge size with a 6’4”, 247 pound frame which the Canucks are looking for to bring in an intimidating force for their farm team. Depth defensemen Nathan Paetsch was acquired in a minor exchange for defensemen Sean Zimmerman (what a cool name) last week. Paetsch is 27 years old and has registered 42 points in 167 career NHL games. He will likely be added to the stacked Manitoba Moose mix, and could be a viable call-up if an injury occurs in the big leagues. Finally in what seems to be forever, the 2010-2011 NHL season has begun. Let’s enjoy every minute of it, because we all know how fast it goes by. Losing O’Brien, the right move? By Garth McLennan hen you sit back and think about it, all the signs were there that Shane O’Brien’s days as a Vancouver Canuck were numbered. Yes, the 27-year old defenseman and the team had avoided a potentially messy arbitration hearing during the summer and came to terms on a one year, $1.6-million contract, but let’s face it, how many players are long term staples on squad’s that in just two years routinely sit the player for strings of games at a time, regularly call said player out in the media by exposing details of his personal life and suspend said player for extended periods of time, all of which occurred between O’Brien and the Canucks in the Port Hope, Ontario native’s two turbulent seasons in Vancouver. It was clear that O’Brien and head coach Alain Vigneault were never on the same page, and O’Brien illustrated as much when he made his parting comments to The Province newspaper after being shipped away to hockey’s wasteland, the Nashville Predators, in exchange for fellow blue-liner Ryan Parent and depth forward Jonas Anderson (which, granted, is a very decent return for O’Brien). “But the thing that really made me upset is you look around an organization and there’s always stuff that goes on during the year, and they try to keep it behind closed doors. With me, AV (Vigneault) just went right to the press and buried me and that made it worse. Everything else that happens on that team, they try to keep internal. But when he had a chance to bury me in the media, he did. He never seemed to have my back. I’d by lying if I said I thought I had a chance with him from day One: O’Brien went on to further discuss how he was never given a fair shake to advance through the ranks of the team’s defence corps, and the fact is, he may have a point. After all, we are talking about the coaching staff here that chose to go with Andrew Alberts, yes, Andrew Alberts, over O’Brien during preseason play. Now, to be fair to Vigneault, O’Brien has never been a choir boy, and there have been times when his on-ice temper and his off-ice shenanigans have hurt the team. But we’re talking about a guy with size (673, 230 lbs) and a good measure of ability. O’Brien was a solid, dependable two-way defenseman who could skate for most of his tenure in Vancouver, while Alberts was brought in at the trade deadline last year and proceeded to showcase his glacially slow skating skills and his striking ability to miss checks and be responsible for bad goals. Yes, Alberts came into camp this year and showed marked improvement and yes, his salary is $600, 000 cheaper then O’Brien’s and to the Canucks, that has to matter considering how compressed they are against the salary cap ceiling. However, as any knowledgeable hockey fan well knows, the preseason counts for absolutely nothing (remember Sergei Shirokoy last year?), and somehow, two years of solid play and excellent playoff performances from O’Brien counted for nothing as well.