Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Pavol Demitra frustrates Canucks fans

Pavol Demitra; Hal Gill;

Montreal Canadiens’ Hal Gill, left, checks Vancouver Canucks’ Pavol Demitra during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Montreal on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press,Graham Hughes)

AP

Every now and then, Pro Hockey Talk will ask for insight from some of the best team bloggers out there. For this feature, we asked a simple question: “Who is your team’s most frustrating player?” Just for fun, I also provided my guess as to whom that player may be. First, here is my guess for Vancouver.

Pavol Demitra - It makes sense that he’s good friends with Marian Gaborik (I imagine the two players really bonded over ice packs and such). The guy can’t stay healthy and his skills are clearly on the decline.

For the Canucks perspective, I asked my pal Vancity Canuck at The Benched Whale to give her perspective on the situation. Make sure to follow her great stuff on the Canucks and her Tampa Bay Lightning blog to boot.

Vancouver’s most frustrating player may not have even made it to my radar if the Olympics had not occurred this year. Even worse off for him, because the Olympics were played in Vancouver, the whole city got even more of a showcase of his talent.

The Canucks’ most frustrating player must be Pavol Demitra. There are other sources of frustration, like the majority of our defense currently, or our hot and cold goaltender, but those seem to vary game by game.

Read more about the frustrating Demitra after the jump.

Demitra on the other hand was injured most of the season and when he returned to the lineup in January, he was underwhelming to say the least. I attributed that to him not playing for the majority of the season and trying to find chemistry on the third line. Then came the Olympics and he lit it up. I was shocked. Where did this Pavol Demitra come from? I thought if Demitra could play as well as he did in the Olympics, our team would be in good shape.

Yet he only has 1 goal and 6 assists since he returned from the Olympics. This is a guy getting big minutes on the 2nd line and who is being paid $4 million dollars a season. The man is the master of the disappearing act. Last year he would have a good game then fade away for 5 games. This year, he has a great Olympics, then just resumes to being his normal mediocre underachieving self.

At 35 years old there are only so many more years that he can play hockey. He was a former Mike Gillis client and was one of the big name acquisitions in Gillis’ first year as GM. But after 2 years of seeing Demitra and his $4 million dollar contract, I think we could do without him and his disappearing act.

I’m hoping that he’ll still be able to bring some of that offense I saw in the Olympics to the playoffs this year but more than likely that was just a one time show for the Olympics. Maybe Vigneault might want to consider giving him a Team Slovakia jersey to put under his Canuck one during the playoffs.