Ryan Kesler: From Whiner to Scorer

As most know, the Canucks are now five games in their road trip from hell. The Sedins haven't shown anything for four games in a row, and the rest of the team has to play like it's the playoffs, and one guy is.

To put it in context, I have a hockey pool that I run with some friends, and when we drafted, I proudly picked Ryan Kesler in our seventh round. Kesler was a player who gave me lots of points and helped me lead the pool until now.

And he's also a player I thought of dropping when the 14-game road trip started.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a huge Kesler fan and have been for a few years now, but there are two things about him that ticked me and my pool off.

First was his unsportsmanlike conduct.

Now, before I hear screams and get accused of treachery, mischief, and severe trolling, I need to clarify what I mean by "unsportsmanlike conduct". No, Kesler does not land cheap hits; no, he doesn't hit to hurt, but it does it tick me off when I see him stop playing because he's too busy faking pain after being slashed or tripped.

Most of the time, he really is tripped, or slashed, or boarded, or cross checked, but he exaggerates so much that either the penalty is not called and he wasted precious offensive time faking an injury, or the referee gives the penalty, but becomes aware he exaggerated and stops calling the penalties afterward.

He makes me think of the boy who cried 'wolf'.

To my and a whole city's delight, he hopefully hasn't done it for a few games.

Now that I think of it, I haven't seen him dive or exaggerate since the Burrows-Auger incident; maybe he decided it was best not to have the referees against him.

The second thing that made me want to drop Ryan Kesler from my pool was his poor road performance. The man had 12 points in 23 road games. Not much when you consider he has 35 points in 31 games at home.

Hopefully, he is turning this stat around. In his five road games, Kesler has four points. I know it's too soon to say for sure, but maybe, just maybe, Kesler will be scoring more than the four or five points I anticipated he'd make during the road span.

Here's hoping an improved Kesler will help the team to get at least .500 on this road trip, not that it will matter much in a week, as Kesler will be the only player on the USA team to play at home