Leave it to the Canucks

Well, you gotta give Nonis credit. The biggest trade since the Hossa/Heatley one occurs, and naturally everybody begins turning to eye inwards. "Where was Nonis during this trade?", "When are we going to start making some improvements?", and "When is the Canucks management going to start looking like they care?"

And in the midst of these questions, Nonis takes a giant leap of faith, completely exonerating himself with a move like this. Here are some things you should know about Nonis' latest breath-taking acquisition:

Ouellet played with the Hershey Bears, Washington's affiliate in the AHL, and gave up five goals on 19 shots before being pulled from his only game.

And here's another nugget:

Ouellet was slated to back up Olaf Kolzig in Washington this season, but gave up seven goals in an Oct. 2 exhibition game against Pittsburgh [!!!], prompting the Capitals to claim Brent Johnson off waivers from the Canucks.

And finally, his AHL record:

He spent the NHL lockout playing for the Portland Pirates of the AHL, going 15-20-3 with a 2.89 goal-against average.

By all signs, a future franchise player.

Now, I'm not saying that Ouellet's not going to end up being a good goalie some day. Who knows? Maybe he'll be our next number one if Auld doesn't get his crap together. But then again, its the uncertainty of the trade that makes it so frustrating. While the Sharks are out making their team quantifiably better, the Canucks are taking a predictable back seat, doing just little enough to make us all wonder whether anybody actually did replace Burke. For some reason, Nonis is assuming that the "core" that we have now is going to surprise the whole world at playoff-time (I think most would agree that the team as it's currently playing would have difficulty getting to seven games in the first round). Well, "Earth to Nonis: The team sucks! We need to shake things up. Trade somebody and get something substantial in return! But just please, please, please do something!"