ths

 

.&

Mott's,

Garth McLennan
sports editor

s anyone who has followed the Vancouver
Ace this year can attest, head coach

Alain Vigneault has made some brilliant
moves to keep his team competitive through a
number of injuries that in previous seasons would
have been catastrophic. He’s been able to pull his
team together and contend with the very best in the
NHL with a defence corps that has had a patchwork
quality about it almost all season long.

Willie Mitchell has missed a very prolonged
stretch of games with a lingering concussion while
Kevin Bieksa was absent for 27 contests this year
due to injury and has also had to battle through
a poor season where he hasn’t come close to
providing a significant return on his $3.75 million
salary.

So with Mitchell’s status unclear and Bieksa
chipping in with just a single goal this year, things
were left to Sami Salo and Alex Edler to hold down
the fort. However, Shane O’Brien stepped up to the
plate in a manner that no one could have expected.
He’s a remarkable plus 16 this year.

Now, O’Brien has long been a favourite

20

whipping boy for Vigneault in the past, and when
the blueliner was late for practice last week, that
trend surfaced again. Vigneault exiled O’Brien to
the press box and left him off the team’s road trip to
California, and while what O’Brien did was indeed
unprofessional, how Vigneault reacted was over the
top.

There was no need to sit O’Brien down
for three games (the team refused to label it a
suspension, but it was). When Vigneault addressed
the media about the situation, he claimed that this
wasn’t an isolated incident, and that O’Brien’s
being late for practice was the straw that broke the
camel’s back, so to speak. He declined to go into
further detail, which caused the media rumour mill
to swirl with claims of O’Brien’s fitness and weight
levels, and his supposed taste for the nightlife at
Vancouver’s Roxy club. That was only furthered
when leaked pictures surfaced showing the Ontario
native partying it up with several female patrons of
the club.

Alright, so the guy likes to live up his status
as a professional athlete. The fact is, that’s not
a crime. Yes, being late for practice wasn’t the
brightest move in the world, but he was bag skated
at the end and with the Canucks on a downward
slide at the time of his suspension-that-wasn’t-a-
suspension, benching him wasn’t all that smart
either.

  
   
     

Beyond Salo and Edler, all the Canucks had to
rely on was Andrew Alberts, Aaron Rome and the
struggling Bieksa. Since being acquired at the trade
deadline, Alberts (who, to be fair, played decently
against Phoenix in the first game of O’Brien’s non-
suspension) has shown that skating is a task even
some in the NHL haven’t mastered, and Rome has
provided little to no upside this year.

The larger question also has to be asked, why
is there a standard for O’Brien, and then one for
the rest of the team? Granted, this may not be
O’Brien’s first offence, but Vigneault wouldn’t
confirm that with details, so we’re left with very
little to lambast the guy with. So O’Brien was
late for practice, but Pavol Demitra can basically
come and go whenever he pleases. I mean, despite
missing the first two thirds of the campaign due to
injury, Demitra has taken several leaves of absence
for “personal reasons”. Last year, Rick Rypien was
gone from the team for pretty much the entire year
because of the aforementioned and ever mysterious
“personal reasons.”

Now, I’m sure that the reasons for missing
games from those two are a little more serious than
being too hung over to get to the rink on time, but
still, over the last two years O’Brien has hardly
been alone in that regard. Unfortunately he’s the
only one catching the wrath of Vigneault’s power
trip because of it.