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Pick your headline.
"Bubba Burns Canucks." "Buffy Slays Canucks."
Whichever one tickles your wordsmithing fancy, chances are what happened on the ice on Wednesday night didn't surprise any Prince George hockey fan.
We saw Dustin Byfuglien here. We witnessed his highs and lows. We've seen the act in our theatre, now we watch the sequel on TV.
Dustin Byfuglien's three goals -- though official credit of the last Chicago Blackhawks tally in Wednesday's 5-2 win over the Canucks seemed to have statisticians and scribes on the scene confused -- against Vancouver, dropping the Canucks into a 2-1 series deficit, were not pretty. They were not the kind we saw often from Byfuglien here -- wind up with the big right-handed slapper, scare the frail goalie deeper into the net, and blast away.
No, Byfuglien's goals were grinder goals. Greasy goals. Goals that come from strength, size and courage. Combined shooting distance, maybe eight feet. Goals that the Canucks, particularly with Willie Mitchell still woozy from a concussion, are going to have a tough time preventing if the bull decides he wants to keep roaming the china shop that is Roberto Luongo's crease.
So, could it be that one of those young teens we saw here in junior is becoming the no-questions-asked key to an NHL playoff series?
If so, that's bad news for the Canucks. Bad news for Canucks fans who have wondered if this might be the year.
Think back to Byfuglien's time in a Cougars uniform, and try not to giggle. He weighed up to 280 pounds when he showed up at one training camp, and former general manager Daryl Lubiniecki famously asked him if he could still skate with the equivalent of two 25-pound sandbags strapped around his waist. Byfuglien still managed to take the longest shifts of any player on the team, though he was clearly out of breath 10 seconds in -- he just ignored the shouts from the coaches to make a change.
It may not be for all the right reasons, but Byfuglien is the sole owner of an era in Cougars hockey. Why? Well, he played on teams in 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05, and is the only player from those teams to go on to a regular job in the NHL. Of his teammates those years, some got a sip of the big leagues -- Jonathan Filewich, Michael Wall, Justin Pogge, Ty Wishart -- and others skated at various pro levels, but only Byfuglien, that rare mix of massive size and impressive skill, would sign a big-bucks deal.
He once -- read this with the "stay thirsty, my friends" Dos Equis commercial playing in the background -- registered a home-ice hat trick, but with two of the goals on the other team and the other picking the corner cleanly on his teammate, stunned goaltender Todd Ford. He also once remarked in a scoffing tone, pure teen attitude, that "all those Kelowna Rockets players care about is winning." Uh, Bubba -- that's kinda the point here.
He pushed other WHL players over like chess pieces. He was a handful off-ice, and in the off-season. He feuded with coaches Lane Lambert and Stew Malgunas, with Malgunas even commenting once that there was a "love-hate relationship" between Byfuglien and the coaching staff. Malgunas wasn't wrong, either. Lambert's two years coaching the Cats coincided with Byfuglien's time here, and it's fully accurate to state that the team took on Byfuglien's lackadaisical attitude and shunned Lambert's fiery persona.
But, as we saw on Wednesday, with Byfuglien even taunting the GM Place crowd after one goal, things have changed. Mentally, Byfuglien has grown up. Physically, the 25-year-old has grown down, reduced to a mere listed weight of 257 pounds through a determined training program and by also shutting off the urge to drive through any drive-thru.
Psychologically, Byfuglien is in the heads of the Canucks, and in the heads of Canucks fans.
All we Canucks fans can hope is that he reverts to the days when he didn't always care about winning.
