[kristianhay]

SAN JOSE — Keith Ballard has been a good and loyal, if well-paid servant of the Vancouver Canucks this season, but on the eve of the biggest game he'll play for this team so far he was overcome with a bout of honesty.

With the injuries to Christian Ehrhoff and Aaron Rome Friday night, Ballard is expected to draw into the lineup along with Andrew Alberts unless the Canuck coaching staff pulls a total phantom move and goes with young Chris Tanev, a highly unlikely possibility. Still not having been officially told he's playing, Ballard was asked Saturday whether he felt he had the confidence of his coach Alain Vigneault.

“I don't know,” he responded honestly, when normally one would expect a yes from that question. “I can't tell you.”

He then went on beating himself up about how he hasn't played very well when he's been given the opportunity and hasn't been "as consistent as I need to be in the situations when I play."

For his part, Vigneault sang from the songsheet claiming confidence in Ballard and that the highly paid defender at $4.2 million hadn't played as much as he might have liked all season because there were better players ahead of him.

That's all very well, but it doesn't explain the differences in the way players have been treated. As soon as Ballard makes a mistake it's been the end of the world and he comes out whereas any number of others, most notably Rome, can make mistake after mistake with total impunity.

“Fair or unfair, that's the reality I'm faced with on mistakes,” he says. “Some guys like Hank and Danny can turn the puck over but because they're putting up 100 points they're obviously going to get more room and mistakes may not affect them as much. There's not a lot of room for error for me, that's the bottom line.”

Everyone can see it's been a stacked deck against Ballard for most of the season and it has seemed that every time he's been taken out of the lineup, he's come back and played even worse. Whereas the Canucks had hoped to bring him along from his surgery on his hip this past summer to a point where he'd be constantly improving by this point, instead it's been a season of further erosion in his game.

Last year, Ballard had a couple of severe shouting matches replete with 'bleep yous' exchanged at the top of the lungs with his coach Peter DeBoer in Florida but this season he claims to have gone the total Mahatma Gandhi route, not even meeting with Vigneault all season to discuss his shortage of playing time.

“I've just felt that coming to a team here, as deep as it is with this opportunity, I would put all things personal aside and just concentrate on doing what I could for the team in the role I've been given,” said Ballard.

And that's what he's done, but has that really served the needs of the team? Clearly if they go on to win the Cup and he's able to be a contributor in these crucial final games that will certainly have been the case. But if he struggles or the coach simply won't use him enough to the point where it impacts the play of the top four by virtue of fatigue, that passive stance will not have served anyone well, least of all Ballard and Vigneault.

For as long as Ehrhoff is out, at least, he'll have to play — and knowing that should help the player. But it's clear he is having all kinds of trouble making the transition from a guy who plays 22 minutes or so a night, like he has his whole career, to a fifth or sixth guy getting 12 minutes.

And the Canucks have had trouble with this in the past.

Mathieu Schneider came to Vancouver thinking his minutes would be a lot higher than they were, and in the end he simply told Vigneault he wasn't the guy the coach was looking for because he simply wasn't suited to that 12-minute role.

Next year, with a full summer of training and perhaps one of Ehrhoff or Kevin Bieksa having departed, things are likely to be completely different. But that's not what matters now. The question is can he play well enough to help the team and keep the heat off the top four, which now includes a 36-year-old Sami Salo, doubtless the next target in Jamie McGinn's sights?

“I'm a better player than I was in Florida,” says Ballard. “I'm sure I can still play very well in this league. My confidence . . . it's the one thing I haven't lost.”

http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Ba...268/story.html

Poor Ballard man, I've always liked him since we acquired him. He seems like a good teammate and person, and his play has always been up there. He's a much better player than Rome, and if AV didn't have such a hard on for Rome he would likely have played the entirety of the playoffs. Here's hoping for him having a good game provided he plays tomorrow!