All the crying and moaning and groaning and bitching on the talk radio in this city. God, some of you people are irritating.

I was playing with some font combinations for a project at work, and did this little image to amuse myself while I experimented. Also, there are some handy facts to bolster your Vancouver Canucks optimism found down below.

The Vancouver Canucks own Kevin Kinghorn delivered a smackdown to Vancouver sports radio aficionados the other day. Kinghorn says that while the freak show likes to panic and point fingers, the Canucks are NOT on the road to ruin. To prove his case, he shows us the numbers.

Here are some relevant facts from his article (some are paraphrased by us; some are direct quotes from Kinghorn - all credit for this info belongs to Kinghorn):

• After 59 games the Canucks have 71 points, one-point back of their 2003-04 total at the same point in the season.
• The Canucks are currently on pace for a 99-point season.
• Markus Naslund has battled a groin injury for months, and he’s only four goals shy of where he was at the same point in 2003-04.
• Todd Bertuzzi is actually one point up on the last season’s (2003-04) total.
• Henrik Sedin has already set a new career mark with 43 assists and 57 points.
• Brendan Morrison is dead-even on last season with 42 points through 59 games.

[Lots more quick facts after the jump.]

Jarkko Ruutu has already set new career highs this season for everything but penalty minutes.

Canucks have 26 more goals this season than they had after 59 games in 2003-04.

14 Canucks players are on pace to improve last season’s scoring pace.

Canucks boast the third-highest scoring defense in the NHL. Only Edmonton (46) and Colorado (40) have scored more goals from the blue line this season than the Canucks (39).

Ironically, Mattias Ohlund (minus-one) and Jovanovski (minus-six) are the only Vancouver rear guards who aren’t on the positive side of the plus/minus ledger.

Sami Salo has already surpassed his previous career mark for goals and assists with ten goals and 33 points.

Only four goalies in the NHL have made more saves than Alex Auld’s 1223.

At his present pace, Alex Auld would finish the season with 35 wins. Dan Cloutier (who has been second only to Martin Brodeur in previous seasons) ended the last regular season with 33 wins to his name.

The dark side, as Kinghorn points out, are these things:

• Canucks are giving up too many goals per game (3.00 as opposed to 2.37 last season)
• A bad penalty kill, 20th in league. Needs improvement. Power play is better, but inconsistent.
• The Canucks have lost a total of 197 man-games to injury this year, most notably Matt Cooke (28), Ed Jovanovski (20), and Dan Cloutier (41). It’s forced eight different rookies into the line-up this season ­ six of whom made their NHL debut.

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*Chicken Little image acknowledged as the copyright of Disney Studios. Alterations ours.

tags: nhl, hockey, vancouver, canucks, evaluation, statistics, team,