Cam Charron's Hockey Stats

I’m a week late, but I should wade into the JT Miller/Collin Delia/goalie pull fiasco.

Watching the game a week later was kind of funny, to be honest. With about 2:15 left in the game, the Canucks were about to break the puck out and John Shorthouse speculated that Collin Delia would come to the bench soon for the extra attacker. Nothing.

Again, with about 1:15 to go, the Canucks recovered a rebound and again Shorthouse speculated the goalie was going to go to the bench. At this point, I glanced towards the bench to see if Bruce Boudreau was offering any sort of signal to Delia that he may have missed. Nothing. JT Miller was (understandably, in my view) furious that Delia was still in the net with under a minute to go, but Delia may have spent the last 90 seconds looking at the bench for the go-ahead.

The correct way to approach this isn’t to take it up with the coach post-game (by then you’ve already lost) but it also isn’t to do what Miller did. There’s no excuse for showing your teammates up in public, or swinging your stick in their direction. He’s gotta yell something like “Delly, let’s fuckin’ go!” and go play.

Now, people have taken issue with Miller doing this since he hasn’t been all that good this season. I kind of want to push back on that. Miller clearly cares about winning and losing and doesn’t like the latter. He’s also been quite good when deployed as a winger, and less so as a centre, where he’s been since Pettersson’s injury (and has continued to play there even with Pettersson returning). His hockey sense and situational awareness aren’t particularly good, which can lead to some brain farts that make it look like he isn’t trying. Maybe there’s a tinge of regret in realizing that he’s in Vancouver for the next seven-and-a-half years at this rate and the team doesn’t have a lot going for it. Maybe he’s a jerk. There are a lot of possibilities.

Anyway, the Jets have been a pretty strong team this year, from what I’ve seen, and the Canucks have been not that, and the Canucks got handedly outplayed and yet only lost by a goal because this sport barely makes sense sometimes.