Hockey players are not known for their big personalities. The conformist, team-first culture of hockey tends to stamp out anything larger-than-life. Ben Hutton, then, is an anomaly.
Hutton is a perpetually-smiling beam of light in the darkness, who seems to remember that hockey is fun. In fact, “Hockey is fun” is what the bio on his Instagram reads.
So it’s completely understandable that the Canucks’ social media team would turn to Hutton to provide some joy and levity for the coming season. Deep in the bowels of Rogers Arena, the crew set up a green screen, camera, and lights to film some fun moments to share in the coming months.
I already know which moment will be my favourite, as they tapped Hutton to do a little dance, leaving the making a little love and getting down tonight to the imagination.
Dance that dance @bhutt10! pic.twitter.com/qc0pxeVCXv
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) October 3, 2017
If that dance looks familiar, it should. It’s a recreation of one of the greatest gifs in Canucks history. It’s a gif so good that I wrote an entire 500-word article about it back in 2015.
Behold, one of my favourite gifs of all time:
The similarity is no coincidence. It’s not just that they asked Hutton to dance and that’s his go-to move; they specifically asked him to recreate that dance.
“I’m a big dancer, I love to dance,” said Hutton with his usual grin. “But that move was created back in college. Me and my roommate, Devin Shore — he’s with Dallas — we had these little dance-offs.”
“Someone did some digging in the archives and they found it,” he continued. “The Canucks wanted me to recreate it, so I recreated it! It was good.”
Good? It’s great! I am so unbelievably happy that someone in the Canucks organization has the same good taste in gifs as I do.
“They’re trying to call it my Dance Move,” he says with a laugh. “I tried to bury it in the past, but they keep bringing it back up.”
We will never stop bringing it back up.
