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head coach: Mike Keenan

roster: C - Mark Messier, Peter Zezel, Dave Scatchard, Brandon Convery; LW - Markus Naslund, Brad May, Donald Brashear, Larry Courville; RW - Alex Mogilny, Pavel Bure, Brian Noonan, Scott Walker, Todd Bertuzzi D - Jyrki Lumme, Dana Murzyn, Matthias Ohlund, Bret Hedican, Bryan McCabe, Adrian Aucoin, Steve Staios, Jamie Huscroft, Chris McAllister, Bert Robertsson, Jason Strudwick; G - Garth Snow, Arturs Irbe.

injuries: Matthias Ohlund, d (returned from concussion April 9, missed 4 games); Peter Zezel, c (returned from abdominal strain April 15, missed 2 games); Larry Courville, lw (wrist January 14, out for season); Dana Murzyn, d (knee December 27, out for season).

transactions: None.

standings:

Western Conference - Pacific Division
Team         GP   W   L   T   PTS   GF   GA 
y-Colorado   82  39  26  17    95  231  205  
x-Los Angeles82  38  33  11    87  227  225  
x-Edmonton   82  35  37  10    80  215  224  
x-San Jose   82  34  38  10    78  210  216  
Calgary      82  26  41  15    67  217  252  
Anaheim      82  26  43  13    65  205  261  
Vancouver    82  25  43  14    64  224  273  

x - Clinched playoff spot
y - Clinched division

game results:

4/06 at Edmonton  L 3-2
4/09 at Calgary   W 6-3
4/11 at San Jose  T 1-1
4/15 Los Angeles  L 2-0
4/17 Calgary      L 4-2
4/19 Toronto      L 2-1  

team news:

by Carol Schram, Vancouver Correspondent

Ugh, 64 points in 82 games. That's what the Vancouver Canucks' 1997-98 season has become. To put that total in perspective, the 1989-90 Canucks finished with 64 points - when Dan Quinn and Paul Reinhart were the team's top two scorers.

Yep, it's been a really bad year.

For the past couple of weeks, Orca Bay has been running ads featuring various members of its workforce. The folks 'behind the scenes' talk about what they do, and why they love working with the sports teams, at the arena, doin' it for the fans. On the last day of the regular season, the full-page ad featured these words from icicle Mike Keenan:

Coaches, players, even owners come and go. But the one constant in any team is its fans. And you are some of the best.
This was a difficult year for our hockey team. And, as tough seasons always do, it brought changes, some easy and some not so pleasant. But through it all, you were behind us.
This season, you were better than we were. Our job this summer is to fix that. When we return next fall to play for you again, we want to give you what you deserve. A hard working team with a hunger to win that's worthy of your tremendous support. And we will.
>From every Canucks Player and Coach, and all those who make up the Canucks organization, thanks for being such great fans.

What does it mean when all they can do is say they're sorry?

Despite Mike Keenan's perception of 'the tolerant fan', a lot has changed in Vancouver in the last decade.

The 1989-90 season was the year the Canucks acquired Jyrki Lumme from Montreal at the trade deadline. Back then, fans wanted the team to make the playoffs, wanted the young players to develop, and wanted the occasional home win or 'good effort' against marquee teams like Edmonton and Montreal. After all, this was the era when the Stanley Cup lived in Alberta, and the Canucks were an easy mark for the Oilers and Flames as they looked to pad their statistics.

Back in 1989-90, the Pacific Coliseum was almost never full, and it was possible to pick up tickets from scalpers for $5 or $10 on game day. 1989-90 was the year the home jerseys changed from that putrid yellow color to crisp, pure white.

Now, after two years out of the postseason, a playoff berth is lookin' pretty enticing once again. As a team, the Canucks sucked this year - there's just no getting around it. They had the worst goaltending in the league, team defense was terrible, and they racked up some massive penalty totals for undisciplined play - with poor penalty killing to boot.

BUT...

The Canucks have a legitimate Calder Trophy candidate on the blue line in Matthias Ohlund. The 21-year- old Swede was steady and wise beyond his years, and even his nasty concussion wasn't enough to keep him out of the lineup for more than four games. Maybe Ohlund's great asset is the fact that he has nothing to compare this to - as far as he's concerned, this is what wacky life in North America is all about. Best of all, thanks to last summer's offer sheet from Toronto, Ohlund is locked up for four more years at a very reasonable $2 million a season.

Also, Pavel Bure's comeback year is now complete. The Russian Rocket got his 50th goal of the season on April 17th against Calgary - the first time in his three 50-goal seasons that he has tallied that magical marker at home. This means his salary for next season will be an average of the top three NHL players - a number still to be determined, and largely dependent on whether or not the league allows those front-loaded free- agent contracts to be included in the calculation. Only thing is - at this point it's far from clear about whether or not the Orcans will have the privilege of paying that astronomical salary. The "Pavel wants out" rumors just won't go away.

More positive signs: the Canucks' two most controversial trades of the year, in terms of talent, are still lookin' pretty good. Lindy Ruff was recently on TV talking about Buffalo's playoff hopes and admitting that Geoff Sanderson has yet to become the scoring sensation they traded for.

A few weeks back, Mike Milbury stated that he was just starting to see the leadership that he had expected when he acquired Trevor Linden; at season's end, there's been no massive resurgence on the Island, either. Meanwhile, Brad May and Bryan McCabe have been mostly swell to watch since coming over in February, and Todd Bertuzzi still hasn't shown any signs of being the 'soft player' described by Milbury at the time of the trade.

A couple of other young players have also shown promise this year. Dave Scatchard quietly racked up 13 goals - no small feat for a rookie center playing on the checking line. Bert Robertsson has been a solid presence on the left side since making the move from defense, and appears to still be improving. And Jason Strudwick may have been a diamond-in-the-rough when rescued from the Islanders' defensively deep roster. Add in a couple more rookies next season, like maybe center Josh Holden or smallish left winger Peter Schaefer, and the Canucks have a nice young, inexpensive core to build around.

But a thousand Josh Holden's are not going to fill the void if Pavel Bure sets his sights on greener pastures. The rumor has been swirling since last summer, when Pavel fired his manager and his dad, ostensibly looking for the money that was owed him from the first half of the 1994-95 lockout year. When Mark Messier arrived, part of his mission was supposed to be to make Pavel happy.

Right now, the Russian Rocket's pleased enough that he got his 50 goals, but something is definitely up. Rather than just saying "It isn't up to me," Bure's most recent comments have been "I'll talk about it when the season's over." He won't give specifics, yet, but expect an announcement soon.

Pavel's potentially imminent departure has put an even darker cloud over these last few, supposedly- meaningless games. Are these the final times local fans will see those patented end-to-end rushes by Number 10 in a Canuck jersey? At a time when scoring has slowed to a trickle, electrifying players like Bure are rarer than ever. Before Bure, the Canucks' top scorer had been Patrik Sundstrom. Since, Alex Mogilny popped 55 goals in 1995-96. But while Mogilny is locked up for three more seasons, even our 'other' superstar Russian right winger won't be able to fill the void in fans' hearts if Pavel leaves Vancouver.

It might be more practical to start thinking about what the Canucks could get for Pavel Bure: an All-Star defenseman? A scorer of equal talent? A crop of youngsters? For now, though, public opinion in Vancouver is focused on making Pavel feel loved and wanted...a tough task when we don't know exactly what's wrong.

The city's collective psyche is already smarting over the fact that David Duchovny's hissy fit is causing The X-Files to leave for LA after five years of shooting here. First we're not good enough for him, now we're not good enough for Pavel? Ya know, both Duchovny and Bure did date the same woman over the past few years. Maybe she has something to do with all this bad energy. And wouldn't that be a tough thing to try to phrase to the press?

Now that the actual playing of games has ceased, it's still looking like the Canucks are going to continue to make headlines this summer. Last year, the Mark Messier story consumed the whole off-season. This year, it'll start with Bure, and who knows where it'll end?

Management is still adamant that they have not abandoned their search for a new general manager. They are alluding that Mike Keenan will stay on as coach for the duration of his three-year deal, and even Keenan says he doesn't want both jobs, because it's simply too much work for one man.

But then comes the mystery - how will you find a qualified hockey man to work with Keenan, especially when his player personnel power is going to be limited at best, or at least questioned at every turn? Vancouver fans gaze wistfully over the mountains at Glen Sather, knowing full well that the new Edmonton ownership group must do everything in its power to keep Slats happy.

The latest rumor surrounds current NHL Vice President Brian Burke, who did the Assistant GM's job here under Pat Quinn for a few years before heading off to Hartford, then to the league offices. While Burke is widely rumored to be leaving his job this summer and looking for a GM position with an NHL team, Vancouver still seems unlikely.

Firstly, his kids live on the American East Coast and he is reluctant to move too far away from them. Second, he remains close friends with Quinn and is likely well aware of the chaos that surrounds the current Orca Bay administration. Third, Burke would never tolerate the sort of power-sharing that Keenan would likely require. And fourth, Burke originally hails from Minnesota, and was on hand when the expansion team unveiled its "Minnesota Wild" name and logo earlier this year. He could be a perfect fit for the new expansion club.

Given the fact that he is already on the payroll and that his on-ice contributions have been somewhat limited this year, maybe it would be best to just hand over the keys to the corner office to Mark Messier, and be done with it.

It's still tough to gauge Messier's contribution to the team this season. Certainly, in the summer, when there was talk of Stanley Cups, I don't think anyone expected Mess to mention which millenium he was referring to. It was understood that the team was to start winning, well, right away. That didn't happen, and while Mess played hurt for much of the season, he wasn't much of an asset offensively and was often a distinct defensive liability.

He may have helped to engineer the player personnel changes that may make this team better in future, but the jury's still out on whether those moves have been successful, and $6 million is still an awful lot of money to pay a guy for that type of role. Meanwhile, if the team does go into a serious rebuild mode with youth, what exactly do you do with a 38-year-old former superstar who made more money than Pavel Bure this year?

Apparently whatever you do, you show it to everyone on TV. The ongoing demise of the Griffiths' family's sports and broadcasting empire means Canucks' TV broadcasts will be taking on a new look next season.

Back in the old days, the Griffiths' owned the Canucks, plus radio broadcaster CKNW and its province-wide WIC network, and province-wide television station BCTV. Now, a lengthy power-struggle has seen control of WIC pass over to the Allard family of Edmonton, while the McCaws of Seattle control the Canucks and Orca Bay.

As BCTV has struggled with cost-cutting under its new controlling ownership, it has done little to pump up its TV broadcasts, using aging Hall-of-Famer Jim Robson and overly keen Ryan Walter as their broadcast team, surrounded by inexperienced young talent to round out the shows. Accustomed to getting the TV rights essentially by default, BCTV anted up $1.7 million for the next three years.

Enter new competitor Vancouver Television (VTV), and national parent company Baton Broadcasting, who control CTV and the new CTV SportsNet, scheduled to debut this fall. Since VTV currently has about six viewers for its supper-hour newscast, they are desperate for audience. SportsNet, of course, is desperate for programming. Zowie: three years, $3 million. A little extra dough for the Orcans, and a whole pile of Canucks games on the tube next season.

Combined with CBC's Hockey Night in Canada coverage, the plan is to show 80 of 82 games on one of these three channels. It appears the Pay Per View experiment has been abandoned, and it also appears that Orca Bay is unconcerned that extensive television exposure could hamper ticket sales.

It may be true that there are two different products for sale now: the "experience" of being at the game, and the opportunity of witnessing that experience through the media. Nevertheless, with three years under its belt at GM Place, luxury box and club seat licenses are starting to expire, and the failed Messier experiment is going to make it harder than ever to drum up true enthusiasm for season ticket sales during the summer. Account Managers at Orca Bay will definitely have their work cut out for them.

So as 16 other LCS team correspondents prepare for the hype and excitement of playoffs, your humble servant is looking forward to the chance to get away from the endlessly depressing scene that has surrounded our 1997-98 Vancouver Canucks. See y'all at the Season in Review issue at the end of June. Go Oilers! Go Sens!

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