Conor Garland’s favourite movie is Jaws.
This is a well-known fact about the Vancouver Canucks winger — it was literally the “very important fact” about Garland in last season’s Bandwagon Fan Cheat Sheet. He’s described himself as a “huge Jaws fan,” to the point that his favourite social media account to follow is The Daily Jaws, which claims to be the “number one Jaws fan site.”
“I love sharks,” said Garland in a Sportsnet profile from 2021. “I grew up on the ocean — I actually don’t swim in the ocean, because I know that they’re closer than people think. I don’t know, I just love sharks.”
Even on the ice, there’s just something about sharks for Garland. He has more goals and points against the San Jose Sharks than any other NHL team: 9 goals and 22 points in 24 games.
It’s one thing to hear about Garland’s love for Jaws and sharks. It’s quite another to see the evidence, which was unveiled when the Canucks posted a “Going Home” video with the winger on Friday.
Last offseason, the Canucks did “Going Home” videos with Quinn Hughes and J.T. Miller, where they visited the players at their summer homes as they spent time with family and friends. It’s a fun series that gives fans a closer look at the person behind the jersey and gives them a little glimpse at their personalities off the ice.
The biggest thing fans can learn about Garland? He’s not lying when he says he's a huge fan of Jaws and sharks.
Even as Garland is introducing his hometown of Scituate Harbor, Massachusetts, he can’t help but note its resemblance to the fictional town of Amity Island, New York from the movie.
“If you’ve ever seen the movie Jaws, this is kind of what it looks like,” said Garland. He’s not wrong, as the movie wasn’t filmed in New York but in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, which is just around the cape from Scituate.
Garland’s home is littered with shark and Jaws paraphernalia, so I’m going to highlight every single shark I can find.
But first, here’s Garland and his dog Bubba in front of a painting of a dog that looks an awful lot like Bubba eating pizza. Bubba is not a shark but is adorable.
Just over a minute into the video, after Garland shows his off-season shooting routine, we get our first shark of the video: on a sign at the gate of his pool that says, “Swim at your own risk,” with a sharkish bite out of the corner.
“There’s, like, ten other signs in here too,” says Garland. “I’m such a nerd.”
Sure enough, shark number two shows up on a “No swimming” sign.
Initially visible behind Garland when he first enters the gate, we get a closer look at this garden shark a few seconds later: shark number three.
Then there’s a sweet segment where Garland shares pictures of “teammates I was close with,” including Quinn Hughes — “the GOAT” — and Tyler Myers, as well as hockey cards representing his favourite line combinations, including The Good Job Boys with Dakota Joshua and Teddy Blueger. He also shows off his first skates and his first hockey stick.
“I can’t wait to see all the comments saying, ‘He could still use that stick,’” quips Garland. “I will laugh at each one of those.”
Then, bam! More sharks!
There are six visible shark figurines/toys in this screenshot plus one more hiding behind his hand that you can briefly see in the video when he lifts his hand up and is visible in other shots. So those are sharks four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.
Hang on, there’s definitely another shark in the corner when the camera pans over briefly, so that’s shark number 11.
“This is probably my prize possession,” says Garland. “This is a megalodon tooth.”
A megalodon is a species of shark that went extinct over 3.5 million years ago and is supposedly the largest fish that has ever existed. So we’re counting that as shark number 12.
Before moving on, we get a closer look at some of the sharks we’ve already counted, as Garland says, “I just, for some reason, liked Jaws right from the start.”
We also catch a glimpse of one more hidden shark. The sign doesn’t count — it has the word “shark” on it but no actual shark — but there’s a figurine of a shark mouth in the back corner of the shelf. That’s shark number 13.
Here’s a dilemma. As Garland is talking, the video cuts to a Jaws lamp, which is easy enough to count, but next to it is what appears to be an oversized Arturs Irbe hockey card — possibly signed. How do we count that? Irbe is a Shark, he’s wearing a Sharks jersey with a shark on it and there’s another Sharks logo in the corner. Technically, that’s three sharks on that one item.
That’s how I’m going to count it: sharks 14, 15, 16, and 17.
Next up is a whole shelf dedicated to the movie Jaws, featuring a Jaws puzzle, book, and poster, as well as the literal jaws of a shark and what appears to be a wood carving of a shark. There appears to also be a still from the movie featuring Roy Scheider's Martin Brody and Richard Dreyfuss's Matt Hooper but no sign of Bruce, the titular shark. That gives us sharks 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22.
Garland then packs up his hockey gear from where it’s been airing out in the sun on his driveway and heads to the rink for an on-ice practice session. Unless one of his practice pals plays for the Sharks, there are no sharks at the rink.
Neither does a shark appear while Garland goes fishing with his friend John Marino, who currently plays for the Utah Hockey Club, or when he plays a dice game with his family around the dinner table.
If they had been playing with cards instead of dice, maybe Garland could have been described as a card shark. Alas, no such luck.
That leaves us with a grand total of 22 sharks in Garland’s “Going Home” video.
