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Mr. Gainey, after seeing tonights game, we have to talk. I think it might be time to get rid of some dead wood. No Rocket, I didn’t say Crack-wood (Brisebois for those who can’t get a bilingual joke). If anything, the last two games actually gave me even more confidence that Brisebois can actually do a pretty good job as a 5th to 7th defensemen. Again tonight he played a solid game breaking many Vancouver scoring opportunities.

No I’m talking about players who can’t contribute in a meaningful manner. It may be a bright move to trade some players whose value is down before they don’t have any value anymore. How can Christopher Higgins be two points below Matt D’Agostini? What good is a static Sergei Kostitsyn with less goals than Lapierre and Latendresse? How good Thomas Plekanec really is with fewer points than Tanguay and Koivu who missed respectively 23 and 17 games due to injuries? And don’t come back with the “best defensive forward” of the team argument because only 3 players have worst +/- stats than him this year: D’Ags, Begin and Laraque.

Ah… Laraque. The single biggest piece of dead wood to get rid of. When he was signed, I was happy to see him in Blue-Blanc-Rouge. Finally he’ll right the wrongs guys like Kostopoulos and Bouillon couldn’t even with all the heart and courage they have. Two things Big Georges shown he lacks severely. I have yet to see him drop the gloves to defend a teammate or to turn things around. He was involved in six entirely meaningless fights this year. And on top of it, he just plain doesn’t cut it as a player. Since coming back from his injury, he played 6 games, averaged over 9 minutes of icetime and didn’t get a single point with only 10 hits, 11 penalty minutes and worse of all only 2 shots on goal. Tonight he was a big 0. No shots. No hits. No impact. I’d rather have Gino Odjick back. At least he would drop the gloves to wake up his team.

Personal note to Rocket: I hate you. I hate saying that you were right. And by the look of it, I begin to think you were. Guy Carbonneau just can’t pull it off as head coach anymore. He doesn’t have what it takes to get control of his team and he seriously need some help from above. Either Bob get down in the locker room and makes a stand towards his coach to scare players or he finds someone to replace him. And I don’t think the first option would work for more than 3 or 4 games.

Not all players need the coach to play solid hockey. The Captain for one is still giving everything he has on a nightly basis and I think he still doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Even losing by two goals with less than 30 seconds to go he was outworking the Canucks players to avoid getting scored in an empty net. His line was the most consistent threat tonight with Tom Kostopoulos playing as hard as his captain. Kovalev has to wake up right f&?%ing now. No shot in the last two games is totally unacceptable from a player of his talent level.

Andrei Kostitsyn played a better game than most even thought he still isn’t nearly as constant as we all want him to be. His shot is to be feared and he shown again that he has speed and can use it when he wants. He just doesn’t want often enough.

And then there are players like Dandenault, D’Agostini and Pacioretty keep showing management that they want to keep their job and deserve to play on this team. But it just isn’t enough to win. And I can’t fault Halak for the loss either. He was playing as good as can be expected with a team that doesn’t help him enough to win.

Even with the positive spins I’m trying to put on things, Bob Gainey has to do something. As the General Manager of this team his job is to do something to improve his team. I’m not suggesting he trades every player I mentioned and the other ones I didn’t mention but aren’t pulling their weight. But he needs to make a move to improve his team either via transaction, coach replacement, speaking to the players or all of the above.

And Bob, you have to do this fast…