Posts tagged Alex Burrows at FanHouse

As the Canucks pull into Anaheim tonight, the team is on the crest of a three-game winning streak, one that's being authored in part by a rather unlikely duo. I'm talking about Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows, a pair of hard nosed forwards who have combined for 15 points in the last eight games as the Canucks have gone 4-2-2 and kept themselves inside the safety zone in the Western Conference playoff race.

Heretofore, Kesler was best known as a smooth skating prospect the Canucks had to overpay to keep thanks to Bobby Clarke, while Burrows was best known for staying in shape in the offseason thanks to plenty of ball hockey. But now, the emergence this season of both as players who can be responsible in their own end while still chipping in with some offense once in a while has given the Canucks an added boost while allowing them to save some money by shipping former uber-pest Matt Cooke to Washington rather than re-sign him.

The pair managed to shine the brightest in Vancouver's two most recent games, with Burrows striking for a goal and two assists against St. Louis on Saturday, while Kesler scored both the game-tying and game-winning goals in a 2-1 OT win over Los Angeles last night.

As a former first round pick, it wasn't entirely unexpected to see Kesler round into form. As for Burrows, a 26-year old bilingual native of Montreal, the route to a steady NHL job wasn't always as clear, with Vancouver head coach Alan Vigneault telling him as recently as the end of last season that if he didn't pick up his game, he might be starting the season in Manitoba:

"I told him at the exit meetings last year that if he didn't pick it up there was a chance he wasn't going to start with the Canucks. He did everything he could to come to camp in great shape."

Last season, Burrows had all of nine points for the Canucks. As of today, he's got 29, including 11 goals, with 13 games to play. And their teammates are noticing the difference, with the recently returned Brendan Morrison saying that the play of the pair has made all the difference now that the team's big guns are misfiring.

For more on the transformation of Burrows into an uber-pest, go visit the invaluable Orland Kurtenblog.

The East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) has grown in both scope and talent level over the past decade, and the league has done a great job entrenching itself as the 'AA' league in North American hockey, rather than just another beer league.

The problem? Unlike baseball, the best prospects don't simply move up the ladder the same way, and being plunked in the ECHL is hardly a sign that the team has a lot of confidence in the young man's abilities. If a prospect is worth anything, they'll be in the AHL, if not the NHL.

As the 'popular' writer Stan Fischler notes, the ECHL has now graduated over 330 players to the NHL, which is a fairly significant number. Still, the league hasn't exactly produced a lot of star power, as you can see by their alumni list. The list of 'good' players is rather slim.

Olaf Kolzig - 35 games

Andrew Brunette - 20 games

Pat Rissmiller - 2 games

Nolan Pratt - 4 games

Patrick Lalime - 26 games

Ruslan Fedotenko - 8 games

Martin Biron - 2 games

Alex Auld - 6 games


Of the 'good' players among the ECHL graduates, you can see that none of them really spent a lot of time down there, and most of the list is populated by goalies, who tend to take longer to develop, and get stuck behind a bottleneck, anyway.

While we should give credit to the ECHL for their graduates, the fact is that the 'AA' league is generally just providing the NHL with a lot of grinders (Alex Burrows), goons (Jody Shelley), and call-up fodder that can't stick around for very long. The chances are slim that a top ECHL player will make a dent in the NHL, and it's not good news if your favorite prospect is ever demoted down to this league.

For most of his career, the oft-maligned Chris Osgood has been panned as a mediocre goalie that has had the fortune of playing behind great teams. Despite having his name engraved on the Stanley Cup ring, and compiling nearly 350 wins on his resume, Osgood's career 90.7% save percentage pretty much streams "Decidedly Average Goalie".

Well, Osgood was recently thrust into the Red Wings' #1 role after Dominik Hasek's magical groin done got broke, and The Wizard of Os seems to be kicking ass and taking names. Last night's 3-0 shutout over the St. Louis Blues has Osgood sitting with a pretty 10-1 record and a SV% near 93%. Compare this to Hasek's 85.8SV% (Whaaa??), and the Wings must be in no hurry for Hasek to heal.

The world of goaltending, in whole, seems to be upside down. Tim Thomas, Martin Gerber, and Pascal Leclaire are leading the league in SV%, while Hasek, Miikka Kiprusoff, and Martin Brodeur languish in the depths of sucktitude.

What the hell is going on? My hockey pool wants to know :(

Wednesday's quadruple OT game versus the Dallas Stars took a toll on the Vancouver Canucks in more ways than one.

If the playoffs are a battle of attrition, the Canucks are not off to a good start ...

Poor Ryan Kesler is going to be out 4-5 weeks after suffering a broken finger and having pins inserted to fix it. He had just returned from a hip injury which caused him to miss more than half the season.

Alex Burrows went face-first into the boards during the first overtime on Wednesday and left the game with a concussion. Burrows says he has no concussion symptoms and wants to play in game two tonight.

Matt Cooke, who had tried a knee/hip check on Ladislav Nagy, suffered a pulled groin during the second period of game one. He is listed as day-to-day, and is unlikely for game two.

Brent Sopel, who missed game one due to back spasms, apparently suffered quite an embarrassing injury:

Brent Sopel had a fight with a cracker. And the cracker won.

The reason defenseman Brent Sopel was out of the lineup Wednesday was "He picked up a cracker yesterday [Tuesday] and his back blew out and just spasmed out," remarked Canucks coach Alain Vigneault.

That must have been some cracker! Sopel will skate this morning and see if his back is OK enough to dress for the Canucks tonight.

To compensate for the recent injuries, the Canucks have called up forwards Jannik Hansen and Nathan Smith from the Manitoba Moose of the AHL.