Peter Budaj stole this one for Colorado on Wednesday night. While Vancouver's special teams slept, the Slovakian netminder for the Aves was peppered by the home team and came out on top with a performance straight out of the Canucks only-way-to-win playbook: perfect goaltending.

Its seems to me that Vancouver has lost some crucial games this year already to shitty goaltenders who happen to be having a Kevlar night.

Here is the question: are we getting beat by shitty goaltenders or are we, plain and simple, a shitty team?

The answer is -- both. At times we are a shitty team. This usually means our powerplay is shit (vs Avalanche) or our penalty kill is shit (vs Detroit) or we just can't score (vs Columbus). We also lose to shitty netminders (Peter Budaj), bad netminders (Chris Osgood) and highly overrated neminders (Pascal LeClair). The question which remains, then evolves into a timeless chicken and the egg argument. Are we a shitty team because we lose to shitty goaltenders or do we lose to shitty goaltenders because we are a shitty team?

If you ask me, the simple answer to this puzzling riddle could arise from an emergency team bonding session over a bucket of psilocybin fungi. That's right folks, I believe the resolution to this classic dilemma, and to the teams current identity crisis (and quite possibly the world financial crisis as well) would be to drop the entire Vancouver Canucks squad off in Stanley Park and feed them all Magic Mushrooms for an afternoon. Believe me, there is no better way to find your way then to chew on some funky 'shrooms for a few hours and bask in the revelations of the psychotropic universe.

That's my two stems anyway.Especially the Sedins.

Can you imagine Daniel and Henrik walking up to the statue of Lord Stanley and the former Governor General explaining to the Swedish twins that Danny needs to pass more and Hank needs to shoot. How amazing would that be? The boys don't need practice and scrimmages and set plays. They don't need the coach calling them out in public and fans and media demanding action or "we want a trade!" They certainly don't need another linemate. N, what the redheaded duplicates need is that which nature has provided. In this case it is not sex. In this case it is drugs. Plain and simple.

Of course some days it seems like the whole team has dipped into the time honored British Columbian tradition of smoking copious amounts of ganja. Our beloved provincial plant. But all that does in the end is make Kyle Wellwood hungry (and you know what that means, appetite enhancer anyone), Taylor Pyatt paranoid and Alex Burrows retarded.

Will the buddha help us conquer Budaj? No, but a little taste of Tim Leary's favorite vegetable and a direct path to Winsville could be just around the corner.

Next Up -- Toronto