The Canucks lost their season opener in a shootout last night, but I’d like to focus on something else. There are a lot of changes inside of Rogers Arena. In case you haven’t been there yet this year, lets take a look.

New Beer

Molson is gone from Rogers Arena. That means that Rickard’s Red is gone too. In its place? Budweiser and Alexander Keith’s. Something just seems wrong about Budweiser being at a hockey game. You think Budweiser and you think football, don’t you? Well, Budweiser is now in control of both of Vancouver’s major sporting venues (they acquired the rights to BC Place). And with Budweiser comes the Budweiser Girls. I think they handed out sunglasses at one point, but for most of the night they were just kind of hanging out until a guy came by to chat them up. Show a little more pep, ladies!

No More Coca Cola

Coca Cola is out, Pepsi is in for the first time at Rogers Arena. Personally, I couldn’t care less but I’m sure everyone has a Coke snob in their life.

New Flat Screen Televisions

Finally the old box TVs are gone from the concourse. This is something that I complained about a lot last season. They’ve given the concourse a lot of life.

New Designs All Over the Place

Walls that previously were plain and grey now have subtle Canucks designs on them (mostly of current and former Canucks). There are a whole bunch more subtle upgrades too (too subtle to mention), but they’re a nice touch.

The Golden Goal Over and Over Again

This is a cool new feature. On the 300 level concourse there’s a spot where you can watch Sidney Crosby’s golden goal over and over again. There were about 30 people watching it when I walked by.

New Banners

The Canucks are starting to get a modest collection of banners in the rafters at Rogers Arena. Of course, the banner that everyone really wants isn’t there yet though. But the Canucks now display the 2010-11 Northwest Division and Western Conference Champions banners.

Henrik Sedin has made club history by becoming the first Canuck to win the Hart Trophy. He walks away with the Hart and Art Ross trophies but not the Lindsay trophy, that went to Alex Ovechkin. The dream season is now officially complete. A player that nobody thought would be thought of as a top 10 player in the league is not only the Art Ross trophy winner, but the Hart trophy winner as well. A great honour for a true class act.

Henrik won the award with 46 first place votes to Ovechkin’s 40. The rest of the voting was as follows:

Pts. (1st-2nd-3rd-4th-5th)

1. Henrik Sedin, VAN 894 (46-34-27-19-4)
2. Alex Ovechkin, WSH 834 (40-35-22-22-13)
3. Sidney Crosby, PIT 729 (20-35-38-29-7)

Breaking news: Henrik Sedin will be nominated for the Hart Trophy as the league’s MVP. He will be joined by Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby on the ballot. I don’t think he’ll win, but what great company to be with. I know that there was a movement for Ryan Miller to be on the ballot, but I don’t know if his numbers were stellar enough to get him on there with this crop.

This is only the third time that a Vancouver Canuck has ever been nominated for the league’s top individual award. The other Canucks to be nominated were Roberto Luongo in 2007 and Markus Naslund in 2003.

After a long absence (bloggers get caught up in the Olympic hoopla too you know), Canuckz.com is back with a look at the Olympic hockey tournament. Most notably, what’s wrong with Team Canada, and what is head coach Mike Babock going to do about to fix things?

Brodeur vs Luongo

The pundits have spoken, and they are in almost total agreement: Luongo should start the next game. And I have to say, I agree with them. Brodeur looked shaky against the US and couldn’t stone wall the Swiss. He hasn’t been terrible, but he’s been the 2nd best goalie on the ice in the last two games and that’s not good enough. Put Luongo in net against the Germans and ride him the rest of the way.

The Forward Lines

In my mind, there are too many players playing too many minutes right now. They’ve spread the ice time so evenly amongst the forwards that nobody is finding a groove. Sidney Crosby is their star and he should be playing 20+ minutes. They’ve also got to find him a winger (please not Bergeron, thanks).  The San Jose Shark line in my mind is also getting too much respect at the moment. Heatley is scoring, but what has Joe Thornton done? To answer my own question, Thornton has produced one assist. That’s it.

Babcock has to find a way to get Jarome Iginla and Jonathan Toews more involved. They’ve played great and have received minimal ice time.

Here’s what Mike Babcock is expected to go with against Germany:

Staal-Crosby-Iginla

Perry-Getzlaf-Nash

Marleau-Thornton-Heatley

Richards-Toews-Morrow

Bergeron

Defense

By “defense” I mean both team defense and their defensemen. Babcock needs to play his top guys as much as possible and go with 6 defensemen. You can’t play with 7 d-men without throwing everyone’s rhythm off. In the realm of team defense, they need to be blocking a lot more shots. Shot blocking, along with goaltending, was the difference in the game against the US. The US got their shots through at will, while Canada’s point men had a terrible time trying to put pucks on net.

Canada should beat Germany, and if they do, Russia will be waiting for them. It’s the worst case scenario for this team, but it is not an obstacle they are not capable of overcoming.

So with news of Tiger taking a hiatus from golf because everyone and their daughter has “transgressed” with him, I had a random thought.. If anything remotely like this happened to an NHL star, would anyone (outside of hardcore hockey fans) give a flying crap? What would it take for the mainstream media, and more importantly the National Enquirers and TMZes of the world, to take notice and publish an article or two?

Well, here’s a quick short list of NHL stars and what/who I think they’d have to do to get noticed:

• 1) Alexander Ovechkin – making Kournikova (where the heck is she?) and Sharapova his bitches.. and prancing them around with him
• 2) Sidney Crosby – caught lip-locking with Daniel Radcliffe. Harry Potter sucks and so does Crosby.
• 3) Evgeni Malkin – caught lip-locking with Emma Watson. At least she’s now legal.
• 4) Sedin Twins – dating each other.
• 5) Joe Thornton – having an affair with Kristy Yamaguchi.

Got a good one? Leave a comment and add to the list! The NHL needs more scandal and pub!!

Have you seen the big Pepsi marketing campaign asking for Canadians to submit a new cheer for cheering on Team Canada in 2010? Essentially they wanted Canadians (or customers) to come up with a Canadian equivalent to “U-S-A U-S-A!” or “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!!!”. Well, it seems as though they’ve come up with a cheer. Canada, get ready for… “Eh-Oh-Canada-Go“.

Hopefully you haven’t leaped up from your computer with excitement and are continuing to read this blog. Seriously though, is that the best they could come up with? No chance in hell that this gets off the ground. It has about the same chance as this cheer sticking:

The cheer they came up with sounds lame, is too long, it doesn’t mean anything, in a nutshell: it’s just brutal.

Not that it ever had a chance. I’d be embarrassed if we used any cheer that originated from a Pepsi marketing campaign. This is one of those ideas that sounds good in a boardroom meeting with the Pepsi marketing staff, but in reality it would never work. So can we just stick with “Go Canada Go” please? It won’t sell as much Pepsi, but it’ll work a hell of a lot better.

Speaking of Team Canada, it’s interesting in seeing how hockey experts are picking much different looking rosters for 2010. Eric Staal and Vincent Lecavalier looked to be locks for the team in the summer. Right now, they look like long shots. How many people were picking Steve Stamkos and Ryan Smyth in the summer? Not many, but they’re being picked by many now. The pick that really seems to be en vogue at the moment is Jonathan Toews, and I just don’t get it. He’ll be a star in the future, but right now how does he supplant guys like Crosby, Getzlaf, Thornton, etc. on a scoring line or a guy like Mike Richards on a checking line? The best reason to have him on the team in my opinion would be because of his shootout prowess.

We won’t have to wait too much longer for the announcement of Team Canada, the decision will come on New Year’s Eve. In the meantime, enjoy the predictions.