[Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.]

Sometimes the storylines just write themselves and you gotta let it wash over you like an acid bath and sure you're screaming in pain but let's not act like it wasn't inevitable.

At some point there was going to be a Canuck who picked up an injury of some kind while blocking a shot, and the inquest into the morality and prudence of The Tortorella System could formally begin. It wouldn't have mattered if a fourth-line guy picked up a leg bruise that held him out of practice for a day, or what happened in this case: the Canucks' third- or fourth-most important forward selling out to block a shot on a 5-on-3 PK in the first game of the season and putting himself on the shelf for what could be a "couple of weeks."

Après Burrows, le deluge.

The Vancouver media has as you might have expected already launched into a Eugene Melnyk-like forensic investigation of the efficacy of shot-blocking as a strategy that works in the National Hockey League. In the piece linked above, Steve Ewen notes that the Rangers were sixth in the league in blocked shots last year compared with the Canucks' 27th. The thinking once was, but certainly now no longer is, that an achieving of some kind of average between the two might be what Vancouver needs to return to its heyday of two, three, four years ago. Rather than, say, a way to reverse the aging process for what is now the fourth-oldest team in the league.

The problem is that Burrows is one of the team's top penalty killers and without him in the lineup for what could be a fortnight or perhaps more, someone has to pick up the slack. That's another player that will be asked to block shots and potentially face injury as a consequence.

Oh no, what if it's a Sedin? Do you think maybe that's why Alain Vigneault didn't let them kill penalties? The Canucks media has been clamoring for them to get the chance to get some shorthanded shifts since the start of the offseason, because the Sedins themselves want to do it, but just imagine what happens if Daniel catches a puck in the hand and breaks a pinkie while he's killing penalties.

Pandemonium. A throng of reporters waiting outside the Tortorella residence. Effigy burnings. Nothing seems out of the question.

Injuries happen. All the time. For a lot of different reasons that often don't have anything to do with shot-blocking. Last season the Canucks — block averse as they were — actually had more man-games lost to injury than the Rangers. Ditto the year before. And before that. And the year befo… well you get the picture. Is shot-blocking going to lead to more injuries than not-blocking? Yeah, of course it is. The puck is hard and moving really fast and guys don't have protection on their skates and that's what happens.

Everyone knew that a few months ago when Tortorella was hired.

But given that there always must be something about which to complain, and that the hand wringing about his infamous curtness with reporters has mostly proven ill founded, one must logically move on to something else.

There are legitimate reasons for which a team-wide commitment to blocking shots can be criticized (i.e. that it must necessarily involve ceding possession to the opposition.), but the Rangers under Tortorella were not getting shelled: they actually had a better raw corsi plus-minus (plus-149) than Vancouver (plus-121). However in the case of Burrows, he was on a 5-on-3, and it's tough to guess what else he was supposed to have done. If he pulls out a flamingo and lets the shot get to the net, there's derision that comes his way there as well. Not buying into the system, and all that. Plus Tortorella probably screams at him.

Was the injury "unnecessary?" Insofar as no injury should be viewed as necessary, yes. But what exactly do people want from Tortorella or his players? Some teams think it's a valid strategy, others don't, but this isn't some big M. Night Shyamalan reveal. "Oh my god he was committed to shot blocking the whole time!"

Please. Everyone knew on the day the hire was made what Burrows and Jannik Hansen and every other Canucks penalty killer would have to do to stay in their roles.