Author Archives: CanucksBanter

Vancouver Takes Road Woes To Montreal

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CANUCKS BANTER     By Andrew Chernoff    November 16, 2015

 

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 Vancouver (7-6-5) continues their 7-game road trip in Montreal (13-3-2), with Montreal trying to regain top spot in the NHL, and the Canucks looking to defeat the Canadians for the second time this season. 

Both teams are looking to end two game losing streaks, with the Canucks losing the battle of Ontario, to both Ottawa and Toronto.

The Canadians, suffered back to back losses to Pittsburgh and Colorado, to drop out of top spot in the NHL, as the New York Rangers jumped up to become the best team in the NHL.

Vancouver since 2000, have a record of 4-6-1 in Montreal, last winning during the 2011-12 season, by a score of 4-3.  All time record: Overall 31-79-13; at home 19-36-8; in Montreal 12-43-5.

WHO ARE THESE CANUCKS?

The Canucks, who beat the Canadians 5-1 in Vancouver on Oct. 27, do not resemble the same team.

The Canadians, having won nine straight entering that game from the start of the season, have been 4-3-2 since then. Vancouver at the time was 3-2-3, and since then have a record of 4-4-2, including that win against Montreal.

While other teams in the Pacific Division continue to climb up the standings, the Canucks are continuing their descent further down in the division with little resistance, as they continually show their inability to solve issues that continue to befell them game in and game out.

The Canucks have lost 4 of 5 games on their road trip. The only victory coming against the NHL-cellar-dwelling Columbus Blue Jackets.

Yet Vancouver has outscored the opposition in those 5 games, 12-8 at even strength.

IN NEED OF A CHARGE

  • The Vancouver Canucks are getting 2.83 goals per game and are scoring scoring on 15.8 percent of their power play chances (9 of 57) overall.
  • On the road, it is 12.5 percent (4 of 32).
  • The power play is 2-14 on the current road trip.
  • Adding insult to the man advantage: Canucks have been stung for two shorthanded goals on the road trip.

CANUCKS HEMORAGING SHORTHANDED

  • Vancouver Canucks are allowing 2.56 goals per game and are killing 79.2 percent of their power play chances (42 of 53) overall.
  • On the road, it is 76.7 percent (23 of 30).
  • Their penalty kill, normally strong, is nearing the bottom of the NHL, has allowed 7 goals on 18 attempts during the current road stretch.
  • The Canucks have surrendered a power play goal in six straight games.
  • Previously they had not given up PPGs in a 6-game stretch  since the start of the 2009-10 season when they allowed PPGs in their first six games from October 1 to 16

Which Canuck team will show up tonight?? The team that beat Montreal so resoundingly on October 27? Or, the team that has struggled on their current road trip?

“I don’t think we’ve beaten ourselves that often. The thing you have to like about our team is every time they come back hard. It doesn’t matter how far we get down, doesn’t matter what’s happened, we’re hanging around at the end looking for a way to win the game.”

— Canuck coach Willie Desjardins

If the Canucks look for a way to win a game too often, they could be staring down the fairway on the 1rst hole of the Point Grey golf course in April.

CANUCKS JOTTINGS

  • Ryan Miller is 0-4-1 with a 3.46 GAA over a five-game stretch in which he’s surrendered three goals or more each time
  • Miller has a 27-12-6 record against Montreal.
  • In 4 games on the road trip, Miller has allowed 14 goals on 115 shots, a save percentage of .878.
  • Vancouver’s Jannik Hansen has 4 goals and 3 assists over his last 7 games.
  • The Canucks have a power-play goal in their last two games
  • Canucks C Brandon Sutter (lower body) did not practise Sunday and could miss his third straight game.
  • Both D Luca Sbisa (foot) and LW Brandon Prust (ankle) rejoined the team in Toronto and practised.
  • Alex Burrows could rejoin the Canucks in Montreal
  • Hunter Shinkaruk called up from Utica Comets after scoring 10 goals in 12 games in the AHL could make his NHL debut against the Canadiens
  • Jacob Markstrom is expected to be in goal tonight against Montreal.
  • Jake Virtanen leads the team and all NHL rookies in hits with 40.
  • Daniel Sedin has 13 points (4-9-13) in his last 14 games.
  • Ben Hutton ranks t-second on the team and second among NHL rookies in assists (8). Hutton has four assists in the last seven
    games and had a career-high three game point/assist streak from Nov. 7-10/15. He also ranks t-third among rookies in blocked shots
    with 20.
  • Ryan Miller ranks first in a number of statistical categories this season including games played/started (16), TOI (966:31) and shots
    against (452).
  • Alex Edler leads VAN in time on ice (24:44) and has led the team in that category in 16 of 17 games he’s played, including nine
    games where he’s led all skaters in TOI. He currently ranks t-12th in the NHL in TOI/GP. Last season, Edler ranked first on the team
    in average ice time per game (23:58) and led the team in TOI on 59 separate occasions including 26 games where led all skaters in
    TOI.
  • The Canucks have had 18 different goal scorers this season (tied for most in the League with St. Louis and Nashville)
  • The Canucks are 9th in the League with 2.83 goals for per game; Their 51 goals on the year are fifth most in the NHL.
  • VANCOUVER’S 2015.16 RECORD WHEN…
    Score 4+ Goals: 5-0-0
    Score 3 Goals or Less: 2-6-5
    Allow 4+ Goals: 0-2-2
    Allow 3 Goals or Less: 7-4-3
    On 0 Days Rest: 2-0-1
    On 1 Day Rest: 2-3-3
    On 2 Days Rest: 2-2-1
    On 3+ Days Rest: 0-1-1
    Score a PPG: 2-3-3
    Give up a PPG: 2-4-3
    20+ Shots on Goal: 7-6-5
    Less than 20 shots:

SEASON SNAPSHOT

The Canucks are tied for 2nd place with Arizona in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, with 19 points, three points behind the division leader Los Angeles who have 22 points. San Jose is in 4rth place with 18 points, followed by Anaheim, Calgary and Edmonton with 14, 13 and 12 points respectively.

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Vancouver is in the top 8 teams of the Western Conference tied with Arizona for the 5th most points, with 19 points. Dallas leads the conference with 28 points, five points ahead of Minnesota, Nashville and St. Louis, all with 23 points.

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Canucks are in the top 16 of the NHL, tied with Tampa Bay and Arizona for the 7th most points in the league with 19 points. The New York Rangers are the best team in the league with 30 points, followed by Dallas and Montreal with 28 points each. Washington, Minnesota, Nashville and St. Louis are at their coat tails with 23 points.

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Montreal leads the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference with 28 points. Ottawa is in 2nd place with 20 points, followed by Tampa Bay in 3rd place with 19 points. Boston, Detroit, Buffalo and Florida are all bunched up with 17 points each, with Toronto in cellar with 14 points.

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Vancouver is led in scoring by Daniel Sedin with 16 points, including a team high 11 assists. Henrik Sedin is next with 13 points, followed by Jannik Hansen with 11 points.The Sedin brothers, Hansen and rookie Jared McCann are the top snipers for the Canucks with 5 goals apiece.

For the Canadians, Tomas Plekanec leds in scoring with 17 points, a single point ahead of Max Pacioretty, P.K. Subban and Brendan Gallagher, all with 16 points. P.K. Subban leads Montreal in assists with 15, two more than Andrei Markov who has 13 assists. The top snipers on the Canadians are Max Pacioretty, Brendan Gallagher, Dale Weise, all with 8 goals each.

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CANUCKS AT A GLANCE

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Statistics courtesy of the NHL, Vancouver Canucks and SportingCharts, with thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Islamic State takes war to its foes after battlefield setbacks

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By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Facing military setbacks in its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq and intensified air strikes from a US-led coalition, Islamic State may have decided in September to take the fight to France and elsewhere.

The ultra-hardline group has frequently threatened to strike inside Western countries since it established itself amid Syria’s civil war and then spread to northern Iraq last year, but one fighter reached inside Syria said its spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani had issued an instruction to act abroad.

“He sent a written order to all sectors and security brigades to start moving, including in Lebanon and Turkey,” the Syrian IS fighter said via social media from northern Syria.

“Lebanon and France and other places are all part of the operations ordered two months ago.”

Islamic State has said it was behind Friday’s killings of at least 132 people in Paris in revenge for France’s air strikes against it as well as twin suicide bombings which killed 43 people on Thursday in a Beirut stronghold of Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is fighting the group in Syria.

The ultra-hardline militants have also claimed responsibility for bringing down a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula on Oct 31 which killed all 224 people on board after Russia began its own campaign of air strikes in Syria.

Turkish authorities suspect a high-profile British jihadist detained in Turkey last week may have been planning attacks in Istanbul similar to those in Paris, two security sources told Reuters on Sunday.

The group has also threatened to attack Saudi Arabia, United States and Russia.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported order, which Islamic State supporters and fighters said was given to dormant cells in several places.

“Their messages to us are sent by blood and carnage so we send them their messages back in the same way, it is simple,” the northern-Syria-based fighter said.

FOREIGN OPERATIONS APPARATUS

The group operates in a very secretive way and has a complicated structure. In general, its Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the ultimate decision maker but his deputy is also powerful. They both consult a Shura Council which is compromised of military, religious and other leaders who give advice to Baghdadi on strategy and military plans.

It practices a strict version of Islam which considers all those opposing it as infidels who should be killed.

The younger jihadi generation looks up to Baghdadi as a powerful leader who will help establish a greater Islamic State that will conquer the world to spread Islam.

It has drawn thousands of jihadists from across the world including Europe. But tighter security restrictions imposed by several European countries have prevented would-be jihadists from traveling and joining the group in Syria and Iraq.

To overcome this, the group has established contacts from its bases in the Middle East with these jihadists and encouraged them to operate as “lone wolves” or in small cells to carry out individual attacks inside countries where they live or work.

According to one of the fighters, the dormant cells have no contact with each other but all answer to a special apparatus in charge of “foreign operations”, from which they take orders to attack. He did not elaborate.

Little is known about the head of this apparatus, who the fighter said is a Jordanian national who works closely with the leadership in Syria and Iraq and travels between the two countries. He is only known by a nickname.

“He masterminds these operations, gets in touch with the followers and supporters there, guide them in training and operations and targets,” said a jihadi source close to the group.

His account could not be independently verified. The New York Times cited officials on both sides of the Atlantic saying that the attackers in France had communicated at some point beforehand with known members of Islamic State in Syria.

ANGER OVER MALI

IS fighters said the Paris attacks had raised morale within Islamic State after a week in which it lost a strategic town in Syria close to the Iraqi border as well as the Iraqi town of Sinjar in one of the biggest counter attacks since IS swept through northern Iraq last year.

The Syrian army and its allies, including Hezbollah fighters backed by Russian air strikes, also broke a nearly two-year-old Islamic State siege of a Syrian army military base and freed soldiers who had been trapped there.

While Islamic State has frequently threatened to strike inside Western countries, its supporters say their battle with France, in particular, is a priority where they say Muslims were discriminated against.

“This is just the beginning. We also haven’t forgotten what happened in Mali,” said a non-Syrian Islamist fighter in Syria reached online, referring to the French-led military intervention in the West African country in 2013 against Islamist insurgents Paris said could launch attacks in Europe.

“The bitterness from Mali, the arrogance of the French will not be forgotten at all,” he said, welcoming the Paris attack.

“Their atrocities in Syria and their support for tyranny is adding to it.”

WORLD WILL BE PUNISHED

France said three jihadist cells staged co-ordinated hits on Friday night at bars, a concert hall and soccer stadium.

Prosecutors have said the slaughter appeared to involve a multinational team with links to the Middle East, Belgium and possibly Germany as well as home-grown French roots.

Islamic State, which captured swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2011, has been suffering from an increased campaign carried out by U.S.-led coalition and Russia separately against its bases, training camps and officials.

Turkey has also come under international pressure to tighten its border to check the flow of foreign fighters coming to join Islamic State ranks.

In one of its popular anthems, called “Soon, soon”, the group promises a long battle that will strike the heart of all those opposing it.

“Soon, soon you will be seeing wonders with a terrifying struggle. You will see. Our battles will be inside your home. I have drawn my sword for your destruction.”

“You have started fighting me with this deluded alliance so now you will have a taste of my wrath. It will last for a long time. We will be coming to you with death and slaughter. And you will taste defeat.”

Anti-Western sentiments grew dramatically among the group’s supporters after U.S.-led coalition began its strikes against it in Syria and Iraq. They say they will not budge.

“We work based on an ideology. How can you defeat an ideology or someone who is a believer? The bigger their war against us, against Islam, the true Islam, the stronger our faith and commitment to our Caliphate grows,” one supporter said.

“The State does not say what it is going to do tomorrow. It told the world that it will be punished and so it will be.”

Source: Islamic State takes war to its foes after battlefield setbacks – Yahoo News