The year before, it was 100% of a fantastic second line.
I honestly thought Raymond was the bigger reason for its success than Kesler was that year (he was always the one skating the puck into the zone and setting up, and he was driving to the net and not playing with tunnel-vision-- On a technical level definitely not as good as Kesler, but key to our offense the same way Ehrhoff was). And that was the year Samuelsson got pissed off and looked fantastic. Also, Kesler was passing and had 75 points.
It's also tough to complain about Samuelsson in 10-11-- I agree that he LOOKED listless and terrible on the ice, but he still managed to be +8, score close to 20 goals and 50 points. Guess he's just a smart enough player to contribute while floating.Absolutely in 09/10 Raymond and Samuelsson were fantastic, our whole top 6 for that matter was top 3 in the league (if not the best), but in 10-11 Kesler was a one man army 9 games out of 10.
Was this 92/93?
11 Team with Malholtra pre injury.
The last year of the WCE was one of the best teams.....on paper. It's too bad their effort was one of the poorest of any Canucks team ever....EVER. I was not a fan of Naslund having his number retired for this exact reason (still am not).
I still remember Tom Larscheid's tirade about how they just up and quit and refused to even try.
It's really no wonder nobody outside of BC took the WCE era seriously when we had Cloutier starting and no number one C. It's a shame it took Daniel and Henrik a few years to really figure it out, if they were breaking out in 2001-2003 that team would have been pretty unstoppable IMO.
And that was one of the best seasons ever by any NHL team.
No way the 92-93 team was better than the team we had when we last went to the finals... Not even close... I think they would sweep the 92-93 team no problem...