"It is a sign either of the evolution of a hockey team or the degeneration of its market that the Vancouver Canucks are third in the National Hockey League, 7-3-3 in the last five weeks, and still the sky is falling.

"It seems like people here in this city, sometimes winning and getting points isn't good enough," defenceman Keith Ballard said Friday. "You have to [win] a certain way and you have to do it by a certain margin and you have to dominate a lot of teams. And that's not the reality of hockey."

If case you're wondering, Ballard is now safely out of the province on a weeklong Canuck road trip that starts today against the Colorado Avalanche. His phone number is unlisted and, no, I don't have an email address for him, so just relax.

Ballard is from Minnesota and played previously in the NHL tanning beds of Phoenix and South Florida, so this whole winning thing and expectation thing and paying customers thing are still pretty new to him."