Tomorrow's Headlines Today: This Season's Canuck News

The Vancouver Canucks begin their pursuit of the Stanley Cup tomorrow night at Rogers Arena against the Los Angeles Kings, and we at PITB are pumped. We're pumped because we love hockey and we love the Canucks, but we're also pumped because a fresh season of hockey means a fresh season of stories bizarre, fascinating, and unthinkable. Every season of Canucks hockey brings unexpected news, from Burrows' Augergate to Luongo's Knobgate to Samuelsson's Snubgate. Oh yes, there will be plenty of -gates this year and you can bet the Vancouver hockey media guys will cover all of it. It's their job. But, if you can't wait for ridiculous news to happen -- if, like Kyle Chandler in Early Edition, you want to know tomorrow's headlines today -- here are 20 news stories you can expect to see.

1. The Canucks lose to the Ottawa Senators in January, prompting Iain MacIntyre to write: Sedin Wrong Choice for Captain. The article will detail Daniel Sedin's three-goal night, how he took the team on his shoulders and nearly won the game single-handedly, and why he might be a better choice for captain than Henrik Sedin, who only managed three lousy assists.
   
   
2. After a game against the Nashville Predators, Stephane Auger will speak out against Alex Burrows. Burrows Made Racist Remarks, Auger Claims, will be the headline of Jason Botchford's article. In it, Auger will allege that Burrows made an Anti-Francophone remark to Auger in French while diving to sell a call. Ron Maclean will back up Auger, alleging that, not only is this true, but everybody agrees that Alex Burrows sells poison milk to schoolchildren.
   
   
3. Tony Gallagher's Litany of Goalless Games Unacceptable For Third-Line Player will examine Tanner Glass's permanent status on the third line and whether or not his offensive production is where it needs to be for such an assignment. The article will be enough for Glass to lose his job in the NHL, and he'll sign next season with Atlant, skating on a line with Kyle Wellwood. Their remarkable lack of chemistry will only plummet Kyle Wellwood's stock, forcing Wellwood to sign with the Zapotec Totems of the Mexican Elite League.
   
   
4. Scott Rintoul will write a veiled retraction titled, Okay, Where Won't the Parade Route Go? after fan outcry that his previous article jinxed the team.
   
   
5. The TSN Web Editor will write Canucks Tame Wild after the Canucks beat the Minnesota Wild, and Qris will lose his mind.
   
   
6. The Kurtenblog will be invited on a Canucks road trip and gain some valuable insights into the Canucks off the ice. Their subsequent blog post will reveal that Ryan Kesler is actually a cheap douche and everybody hates playing the Wii with him. It will be titled, In NBA Jam, Kesler is Always the Miami Heat. Upon discovering that Kesler is a bit of a prick, fans will forget he always was and it never mattered before, then run him out of town. No bloggers will be invited to anything ever again. Thanks a lot, Mike and Jason.
   
   
7. Ian Walker's Burrows is Good at Hockey; By the Way, I Married Bif Naked will inexplicably get past his editor and find its way to the Vancouver Sun's Puckworld. It will touch on hockey once or twice, but mainly be full of non sequiturs and irreverent personal statements, like his Scene & Heard series.
   
   
8. Pass it to Bulis will continue to follow Kyle Wellwood's hugely successful season in Russia, culminating in Wellwood's World, Vol. 15: Wellwood Playing Like a Man Possessed, in which we will report that Wellwood has actually been possessed by a malevolent Russian hockey ghost. Moscow is a crazy place.
   
   
9. Jim Jamieson's Henrik Wins Heart Trophy will be a touching off-ice piece about the kids at the BC Children's Hospital giving Henrik a heart-shape thank-you card made out of construction paper. Daniel will again be snubbed. During his acceptance, Henrik will dryly joke, "Nobody can say you're the better philanthropist right now." Full of rage at being passed over yet again, Daniel will take more slapshots.
   
   
10. Kevin Bieksa Frontrunner for Norris Trophy will be written by Elliott Pap. On the 1st of April.
    
    
11. Gord McIntyre's I'm Not Iain MacIntyre will seek to distinguish himself from the Vancouver Sun writer whose last name is very similar, but the article's extremely negative tone will only fuel speculation that they're the same person.
    
    
12. Jason Botchford will write Torres Gets Four Games For Headshot after a dirty hit Raffi lays on San Jose's Devon Setoguchi garners a suspension. This will be followed by Cooke Gets One Game for Killshot after Cooke pulls a gun and turns it sideways while turtling to avoid a rematch with Evander Kane, and Sean Avery Suspended One Game for Headshots after he skips the NHL all-star game to go uptown and submit some glamour photos to the editor of Vogue.
    
    
13. Ben Kuzma's Daniel Stole My Birthright will blow the lid off a shocking Canucks secret: Daniel Sedin, in collusion with his sneaky mother, tricked Mike Gillis into giving him the captaincy in a deception of Biblical proportions. Kuzma will detail the lengths to which Daniel went to pull off the trickery, which included wearing goatskins on his arms and saying, "I'm Henrik."
    
    
14. Florida Panthers Realize Their Mistake, an article written by Cam Cole, will be about Florida's attempt to recall Luongo, Ballard, Oreskovich, Paetsch, and other players from their conditioning assignments in Rochester before realizing that they actually sent all these players to Vancouver for nothing. "The speed dial buttons were backwards ," Panthers GM Peter DeBoer said. "Looks like they've been that way since the lockout."
    
    
15. Tony Gallagher's Vancouver is the New Centre of the Universe will be written after the Canucks become the last remaining Canadian team in the playoffs. Most will be about the shift in focus in Canada's hockey media, but it will also touch on findings by scientists that Toronto was never the center of the universe. Upon seeing, this season, how hard Toronto continues to suck, it will be reclassified as a black hole.
    
    
16. Brad Zeimer's Hodgson a Bust is a headline that will ignite much debate, but it will diminish considerably when it turns out to be an article about UBC art student Sungwoo Hong and his sculptures of Canuck players' heads.
    
    
17. Sami Salo will announce he's ready to get back into the lineup in Ian Walker's Salo Declared Ready For Action, but at the next day's press conference, he'll lean in ever so slightly to answer a question from CTV News and the soft light from the TV camera will melt his face off kind of like this. Six to eight weeks.
    
    
18. The day after the trade deadline, all the talk will be around Jason Botchford's Gillis Acquires Twenty More Defensemen article. "We were concerned about depth," Gillis will say.
    
    
19. When Mikael Samuelsson gets the puck stuck along the boards and begins to dig it out, nasty old Derek Boogaard decides to take a run at him. Seeing it happen in slow motion, local hayseed Mason Raymond decides he has to do something about and jumps on the ice, lassoing Boogaard away just in time. Instead of being amusingly called for "roping" like in Mighty Ducks 2 (at 8:45 of clip), however, Raymond is called for interference, unsportsmanlike conduct, too many men, and suspended ten games for bringing a foreign object onto the ice. The ensuing Puck Daddy article Where Did Raymond Get that Thing of Rope From? will ask a very good question.
    
    
20. On an off-day, aspiring chefs Guillaume Desbiens and Alex Bolduc will enter a seafood cooking contest in Stanley Park and win. The next day's Province article, Canucks Win Stanley Cup of Chowder Cookoff, will mislead and upset a lot of people.