Vancouver Canucks

Being a Vancouver Canucks fan over the past five decades has been an exercise in patience at times, punctuated by a few keen surges of excitement leading to bitter disappointment. The team joined the NHL in 1970 as part of the post-Original Six expansion* and struggled in its early years, battered by stronger expansion teams like the Philadelphia Flyers and Buffalo Sabres who had gotten the jump on the Canucks by three full NHL seasons. The team made one of the most unlikely playoff runs of all time in 1982 when, having had never won a playoff series (and in face, having had won only three playoff games) in the first twelve years of their existence, the lowly Canucks swept aside the Calgary Flames, Los Angeles Kings, and Chicago Blackhawks (losing just two games in three series) to find themselves in the Stanley Cup Finals. Unfortunately (for the Canucks), the team at the other end of the ice was the New York Islanders, flush in the midst of their four-year Cup dynasty and in no mood to share the spoils. The Canucks were sent back to the West Coast in four quick games, but with a much enhanced sense of love and devotion from Vancouver fans, who had been slow at first to warm to the struggling team. One Canuck playoff tradition from that 1982 run, however, survives to this day. In the series against Chicago, Coach Roger Neilson had waved a white towel over his head in “surrender” to what he believed was poor refereeing and his players did the same. When the series came to Vancouver, the entire crowd was waving white towels, this time in support of their team. The Canucks were their strong division’s doormats for much of the rest of the 1980s, but the acquisition of several exciting young players, including Trevor Linden and Russian speedster Pavel Bure, saw the team’s fortune begin to change. They entered the 1994 playoffs against a strong Flames team and played one of the most exciting series in their history, with goaltender Kirk MacLean stretching his body across the goal to make one of the wildest saves in recent NHL history before Bure won Game Seven for the Canucks in double overtime with a fantastic breakaway goal. More Game Seven drama was in store, however, after the team went on to beat the Dallas Stars and Toronto Maple Leafs to reach the Stanley Cup Finals. In a see-saw battle with Mark Messier’s New York Rangers, the Canucks lost in Game Seven by a score of 3-2, hitting the post twice with what would have been the tying and winning goal. Oddly, what seemed like a young team destined for years of playoff contention tailed off quickly following the 1994 playoff run, missing the playoffs four years in a row between 1996 and 2000. A rebuild followed, with the Canucks adding a bevy of talented young Swedish players such as Markus Naslund and the Sedin twins, Daniel and Henrik, along with many others. The team took a while to mature, but caught fire in 2011, taking the Canucks back to the Stanley Cup Finals for the third time in their history. Along with the impressive Roberto Luongo in goal, the Sedin twins were a delight to watch, with their near-telepathic sense of one another on the ice allowing for passes that verged on the impossible. Once more, in the Finals, the Canucks found themselves staring down the barrel of a Game Seven, this time against the formidable Boston Bruins, and the team once again came up short, blanked 4-0 in the final game. Canucks fans, their hopes raised sky-high once more, came crashing down to earth just as they had in 1994. Since 2011, the team has struggled desperately, failing to make the playoffs on eight occasions and only winning a playoff series in the strange COVID-19-affected season of 2019-20. So far, however, in 2023-24, the team has been flying high again, making Canucks fans nervously, reluctantly, cautiously, skeptically optimistic that their team can make another run at the Cup that has eluded them for so long. 

*While the Canucks were the first Vancouver NHL team, they were not the first professional hockey team in the city. The Vancouver Millionaires played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 1911-1926, even winning the Stanley Cup in 1915, the first-ever West Coast team to do so!