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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

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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.