The Vancouver Canucks: Great Moments in Time

[MarkusNaslund19]

power forward was kind of gillis’ white whale, wasn’t it?

like goalies for burke or centers for quinn

bernier, oreo, kass, booth, niklas jensen, byron bitz, matthias… he was always looking for that skilled big man but the most successful one was probably raffi torres

He also really seemed to pursue Nick Bjugstad.

 

[PuckMunchkin]

All of my favourite fights are Rypien fights, and that one tops the list.

Knowing what we do about his health, I really cant watch those...

 

[theguardianII]

Keep reliving the day they fired Benning

 

[Play]

Keep reliving the day they fired Benning

To me, it truly feels like it was just yesterday.

 

[MS]

Today I learned that Vancouver used to wear their road socks with the home Flying V jerseys when Boston visited in the late 1970s.

This is unquestionably the worst uniform ever worn in team history :

 

[Hit the post]

Keep reliving the day they fired Benning

 

[VanJack]

In the last game they replayed that clip of Gino Odjick scoring on a penalty shot against Mike Vernon.....and the sheer unbridled joy that followed.

It never fails to bring a lump to your throat.......the quintessential Canuck, gone too soon.

 

[Lindgren]

The most recent great moment in time is today, with Miller's response to being benched for a few minutes.

 

[theguardianII]

TWO YEARS AGO TODAY.

WAAAAHOOOO!

The end of hell the start of moving instead of just sitting around.

 

[andora]

 

[Chairman Maouth]

 

[Jyrki21]

 

[theguardianII]

So there was this break for the seasonal greetings, I thought that just for shlts and giggles I would look at some Vancouver stats as they are all the rage now.

I got a BIG surprise, not a good one either.
This stat has nothing to do with today's team per se but at the franchise.

Vancouver fans are loyal.
Their, our frustrations have merit and some if not lots of justification.

Using points percentages the Vancouver Canucks have, and this is not pretty, the 4th worst points percentage in the entire NHL's history, which can become the 2nd worst quickly because Seattle and Columbus are very close behind and have to overcome many fewer game losses to pass the Nucks. Arizona is nipping at their heels too but might take a little longer if at all to catch them.

The Canucks have a life time winning points percentage of 0.491. .491 points percentage. Seattle and Columbus have .485 & .486.

Just maybe all these less than winning seasons can explain why the market is so volatile at times.

Over the decades losing is the norm and winning, the exception, on average, AVERAGE.

Now for another tidbit, they are the only franchise that has never done a full blown rebuild since their start. The ONLY Franchise.

Does one correspond with the other, that can't be ruled out but also can't be attributed as the only reason either.
But there is the Toronto Maple Leafs that also had not done a full blown rebuild until the Shana Plan and that stopped just short needing one more year BUT they had some outstanding drafted players and now are in the playoffs every year, their fans lament not winning in the playoffs instead of hoping to get there.

Anyway I didn't expect the franchise to have that bad a standing in the league history.

Vancouver fans are loyal, maybe to a fault, tolerating the losing and still being optimistic for the future, they deserve recognition for perseverance,

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

If anyone has as bad of eyes as me, I believe it's the famous Linden/McLean picture. Great work @Jyrki21

If it weren't for the box making the blocker, I would have been staring for an embarrassingly long time

 

[theguardianII]

Too bad you couldn't get all the picks traded for other team's cast off players, wasn't Calgary's RHD Rasmus Andersson Vancouver's 2nd round pick? 24 picks traded away, 14 picks traded for, mostly 5, 6 &7 rounds.
Traded away, eight 1rst and 2nd round picks and two 1rst round drafted players and released another, three 1rst round drafted picks gone from the team. And now one that has asked for a trade twice.

EIGHT 1rst and 2nd round picks AND Three blown 1rst round picks.

Ya Benning has teams lining up to hire him

 

[PavelBure10]

If anyone has as bad of eyes as me, I believe it's the famous Linden/McLean picture. Great work @Jyrki21

If it weren't for the box making the blocker, I would have been staring for an embarrassingly long time

Thank you for mentioning what was in the picture. I wasn't quite looking at it the right way. Now that you mentioned it I can't stop seeing it. I was terrible at seeing the magic eye pictures, but this one is really well done.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Now for another tidbit, they are the only franchise that has never done a full blown rebuild since their start. The ONLY Franchise.

i think the late 80s was definitely a full blown tear down rebuild

signing/trading for (depending on whose account you believe) barry pederson was a benning-esque move, but after that they tore it down, including the studs.

when pat quinn took over the first thing he did entering his first season as GM was trade his number one center, patrik sundstrom, for young greg adams and a 21 year old goalie prospect named kirk mclean

in quinn’s first four years, they drafted 2nd, 7th, 2nd, and 8th overall: linden, herter, nedved, and stojanov. he stockpiled extra picks in exchange for vets he was cutting bait on (harold snepsts and rich sutter became the extra first that he used on shawn antoski — the first time we picked a stiff instead of a tkachuk, haha — and petri skriko became the extra second that became mike peca; one forgotten bit from the epic garth butcher trade, we got a 5th rounder as a throw in, because it was pat quinn’s MO to always ask for an extra random piece as dave nonis recently said on the radio, and that resulted in us having two 5th rounders within a handful of picks of each other in the ’92 draft: the first was a safe pick, a high scoring college freshman with size who played a handful of games and had a successful career in the minors before moving on to europe, the second was used on a big, late blooming dman who ended up playing 1,100 games, adrian aucoin).

and by 1991, quinn had stockpiled enough assets and drafted enough surplus young talent that it was time to actually rebuild the team. the bottomfeeding 1989 team that almost accidentally won a playoff round was a completely different team by bure’s rookie season, with only linden, adams, lidster, and mclean still there.

 

[theguardianII]

I don't know if I would call that a total rebuild because he didn't really gain that many picks.
But he did get the most out of the picks he did have.
And it is hard to find a trade that was a total loss or bad. And he made a lot of trades, a lot.
He didn't trade that many picks away or really get that many extra.

But if you are right then it took him only 3 years to do the rebuild at a time there was no free agency. Making it harder.

That can't be, EVVVVERYONE knows it takes 7 years or more to do a rebuild, right?

 

[Jyrki21]

Using points percentages the Vancouver Canucks have, and this is not pretty, the 4th worst points percentage in the entire NHL's history, which can become the 2nd worst quickly because Seattle and Columbus are very close behind and have to overcome many fewer game losses to pass the Nucks. Arizona is nipping at their heels too but might take a little longer if at all to catch them.

The Canucks have a life time winning points percentage of 0.491. .491 points percentage. Seattle and Columbus have .485 & .486.

So whenever I hear this, I have to point out that it's highly colored by the fact that newer NHL teams have spent more (or all) of their existence under a salary cap (that pushes all teams toward the middle) and with 3 point games that inflate point totals greatly (as much because of fake "wins" in tie games as loser points themselves).

So while the Canucks would definitely still be near the bottom, I'd be willing to bet that on a level playing field it wouldn't be quite as bad (teams like Columbus and Florida would surely be lower, for example). The Canucks also got screwed several times by the repeated insertion of good, non-expansion teams into their division (EDM, CGY and COL) when they had to claw up from zero in an era where that took a long time.

 

[HairyKneel]

I don't know if I would call that a total rebuild because he didn't really gain that many picks.
But he did get the most out of the picks he did have.
And it is hard to find a trade that was a total loss or bad. And he made a lot of trades, a lot.
He didn't trade that many picks away or really get that many extra.

But if you are right then it took him only 3 years to do the rebuild at a time there was no free agency. Making it harder.

That can't be, EVVVVERYONE knows it takes 7 years or more to do a rebuild, right?

It absolutely was a rebuild. He also targeted younger players in deals like a 24 year old Lumme, 24 year old year old Robert Dirk, 24 year old Hedican, 20 year old Adrien Plavsic. Traded 26 year old Sundstrom for 22 year old Mclean and 24 year old Adams. Picked up 25 year old Diduck for a 4th. I imagine a couple posters here lost their shit about that.. He insulated a young team with grit on the cheap like Momesso, Hunter, Stanley etc. It was a solid rebuild.

 

[MS]

It absolutely was a rebuild. He also targeted younger players in deals like a 24 year old Lumme, 24 year old year old Robert Dirk, 24 year old Hedican, 20 year old Adrien Plavsic. Traded 26 year old Sundstrom for 22 year old Mclean and 24 year old Adams. Picked up 25 year old Diduck for a 4th. I imagine a couple posters here lost their shit about that.. He insulated a young team with grit on the cheap like Momesso, Hunter, Stanley etc. It was a solid rebuild.

Yeah. The only 2 players left from when Quinn was hired in 1987 that were still on the 91-92 team that turned a corner were Doug Lidster and Jim Sandlak.

Basically the entire mid-80s core (save Lidster) was cleared out and replaced with better, younger players.

It doesn't look like the absurd tanks of the modern NHL as there were completely different dynamics at that time but that was 100% a rebuild.

 

[Jyrki21]

 

[PavelBure10]

I should make that my new avatar. Lol

 

[HairyKneel]

All of my favourite fights are Rypien fights, and that one tops the list.

No love for Fraser,Delorme or Coxe? Fraser is the toughest guy we’ve ever had, perhaps Brashear but he was a shitty human.

 

[PavelBure10]

No love for Fraser,Delorme or Coxe? Fraser is the toughest guy we’ve ever had, perhaps Brashear but he was a shitty human.

Coxe is Probert was a beauty fight. Probably the best fight in Canuck history.

Odjick vs the Blues classic.

All Rypien fights were great.

Brad May had a lot of beauties as a Canuck.

Scott Walker the wild thing, was good.

Brookbank vs Oliwa was entertaining due to the fact Oliwa came to the Canucks practice and mocked him.

Brashear was probably the toughest. Very strategic and huggy, boring style that worked.

Bieksa's leading the way in a fight with a superman punch was rad.

Momesso freaking out everything he fought. Always went insane lol.

A lot of tough guys and entertainment from fighting in Canuck history.