Most years, by the time Spring Break rolls around in Montreal, the worst of the winter is behind us. Sure, there’s still a bit of snow on the ground, but the sun has some warmth to it; we can consider leaving our scarves and mittens at home when venturing out and those closer to the earth than your correspondent are beginning to peruse their seed catalogues.

The winter of 2008, however, shows little indication of loosening its hold anytime soon. More than ten feet of snow has fallen since November, when the white stuff arrived to stay, unannounced and almost a month ahead of schedule. Sick of waiting for spring to arrive, it was decided to go out and find some. Vancouver, here we come.

Facilitated by an airfare deal that let two of us travel across the continent for less than it would normally cost for one as long as we used Ottawa’s airport to come and go and the prospect of free lodging at Uncle Tony’s, off we went. Among the few scheduled events on our agenda was the March 6th game between the Canucks and Predators. Having secured tickets online for Mac and I in the upper bowl, we strolled to the game bareheaded and in sneakers. Entering GM Place through the souvenir store “where the players shop,” we decide to modify a tradition begun against the Winnipeg Jets at the Forum and continued since then - picking up a puck from the visiting team.

Mac had to settle for a Canucks' puck since they do not carry any merchandise other than from the home team. Seems they used to get stuck with a lot of stock at the end of the season, so they cut out anything that wasn’t "Canuckish." No Vancouver Giants merchandise either, which was what I was looking for that evening.

That was the only disappointment. The $8.00 beer was micro-brewed and there was a great view of the ice from comfy seats surrounded by pleasant and knowledgeable fans who were more than willing to update a visitor on their team. And it was Mexican Night too, with a mariachi band including the first few bars of the Hockey Night in Canada theme in their repertoire, giving a decided Latin twist to this nation’s alternate anthem.

Seems that the Canucks just can’t score these days, something they remedied to the delight of the crowd early and often, chasing Preds starter Dan Ellis in a flurry of early action. While we had come more or less expecting to see team captain Markus Naslund lead the charge for the home side, he ended up having a game he’d love to be able to forget, allowing the turnovers that led to both first period Nashville goals and seeing only 16 minutes of ice time in the eventual 6-2 Canucks triumph.

Alex Burrows, who took his first strides towards the NHL not ten miles from here, spent several years in the minors, slowly climbing the hockey ladder. Coming into his own this season, Burrows has developed into a gritty player, able to perform in any situation and is the favorite to pick up this season’s Fred Hume Award, given to the Canucks unsung hero. Appearing in every game this season, the 6' 1", 190 pound forward is sixth in team scoring and if he plays too many more games like he did last Thursday, he could well raise his profile too high to meet the eligibility rules for the Hume.

With Vancouver shorthanded before the final echoes of "O Canada" had faded away, Burrows chased a puck that popped by a Predators defenseman at the point, caught it on the dot to Ellis’ right, and flicked it past him into the Nashville net. Only 21 seconds had elapsed from the start of Henrik Sedin’s penalty and just 37 from the opening face-off.

Red lights strobed as every second shot seemed to find the twine. In the next six minutes, each side scored a pair, with Burrows assisting on the third Canuck marker. By the time the opening stanza was wrapped up, he had also picked up a penalty. Not the fighting major needed to complete his Gordie Howe hat trick but the night was still young.

With the game pretty much safe in Vancouver hands, the final periods were close checking stanzas, with the Canucks getting two more goals, finishing the scoring on Ryan Shannon’s power play goal at 11:01 of the third, a moment I managed to capture on pixels after having watched most of the game on a very small screen.

For some reason, Radek Bonk seemed to be in more than his fair share of shots. He’s screening Luongo at the far end in the first period and taking a shot on him from the top of the circle moments later. In the second, he’s frozen in time once again in front of the Vancouver net, this time awaiting a pass from an unseen teammate. A few frames later, there he is again, this time being helped from the ice, perhaps the price for getting too close to the cage too often.

GM Place is only the third NHL arena I’ve seen a game in, the other two being the Forum and the present rink. Nothing compares to the shrine that stood at the corner of Atwater and Sainte Catherine streets but the home of the Vancouver Canucks is an awful nice place to watch a hockey game. The corridors are wide and easier to negotiate than those at the Bell Centre and the seats in the upper reaches are softer and more accommodating to my aging hindquarters than those in Montreal. Strolling around, we found a wall dedicated to the immortals of the club’s first 30 years.
Banners celebrating division and conference titles are hung from the rafters, as is one commemorating the great Stan Smyl, who spent a dozen years wearing some of the ugliest uniform known to pro sport.

While we didn’t taste any of the solid sustenance available, we were more than happy with the fluids we consumed and enjoyed exploring the rink. We left with a lot more swag than we’d planned to carry away. A major credit card company, while unable legally to take Mac’s particulars, was willing to turn down my application and in exchange for a few moments of my time, offered both a banner and scarf festooned with the Canucks logo as incentives. What’s a few minutes?

Between periods, the band played Mexican music, a trip to Cancun was shot out of a bazooka, wrapped in one of the many t-shirts that rained down on the crowd during the intermission and an inflatable Zamboni-sized killer whale floated above, dropping tickets to an upcoming Janet Jackson concert. Unfortunately, we didn’t come close to any of that, although we did emerge from the night as winners, as did all the folks sitting around us.

Thanks to a major distilling corporation, everyone in section 316 got to wear a silly hat home from the game, one that vaguely resembles a hockey helmet crossed with a fizzy slipper and has the name of a high-test beverage from a hockey playing country where the letters K and V are not as hard to get rid of in a game of Scrabble as they are over here.

Leaving, knapsack stuffed, with a few minutes left on the clock, we missed the evening’s last photo op, ducking out before the last minute brawl that brought the curtain down on the evening’s entertainment. Alex Burrows didn’t complete his Gordie Howe hat trick, so we really didn’t miss anything of historic significance and we were back at Uncle Tony’s before the radio postgame show ended.