Province letters: Canucks cruel to fan favourite Bruce Boudreau

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Bruce Boudreau is the sacrificial lamb, with Canucks management replacing him as coach with Rick Tocchet. The Canucks don’t need a coaching change as badly as they need a new defensive lineup, as the current one is as porous as a sifting screen. The team has proven that it can score goals, but the players just can’t keep the biscuit out of their own net as they allow teams to regularly walk in and pick holes in their overworked goaltenders. They have a couple of great defenders but that level of skill isn’t spread throughout their defensive unit, and we all know they have no salary cap room to fix this persistent and glaring problem.

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What has Tocchet done that Boudreau hasn’t done 10 times over in his career? Unfortunately, Jim Rutherford has been painted into a corner and has to blame someone to try and save face with the owners.

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It’s really too bad as “The Bruce” is one of the finest coaches the NHL has ever had and definitely one of Vancouver fans’ favourites.

D’Arcy Leoppky, Maple Ridge

Impossible to remember anyone so highly respected being humiliated so publicly by the Canucks organization. A real shame. I won’t be going to any future games.

Terry Taylor, Chilliwack

The fact this is happening at the same time there is a documentary out on Harold Ballard (Offside: The Harold Ballard Story) is very sad, as it shows things have not changed in the hockey world. Nearly 44 years ago, a three-day soap opera occurred, which included Toronto Maple Leafs owner Ballard’s lack of respect for a human being when he dismissed coach Roger Neilson.

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After a player campaign to have Ballard change his mind, he unfired Neilson. What followed remains one of the most entertaining — make that embarrassing — episodes in Leaf history: The paper bag game. Ballard, to save face, decided after the national anthem for a Saturday night home game that Neilson should appear behind the Leafs bench with a paper bag over his head and after a few seconds someone would pull the bag off his head. Ballard later said they were just having some fun with it. Yes, but at whose expense? Neilson, who was reluctant, to say the least, refused.

A 24-year-old Bruce Boudreau played in 26 games for that 1978-79 Maple Leafs team — although at the time of the above incident he was skating with the Leafs’ top AHL farm team in New Brunswick.

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All these years later, as he is being belittled, disrespected and humiliated, I wonder if he has thought of Neilson, his once NHL coach. Maybe at his last game, it was time for Bruce to appear behind the bench with a paper bag over his head with the writing “Bruce, there it is” to make a mockery out of the whole situation and to shame Canucks management for being so cruel to a gentleman, a husband, a father, a former player, and a great hockey coach.

Russ MacGregor, Williams Lake