For the most part, 2017 was pretty terrible. That goes for the world at large as well as the Vancouver Canucks.
But the end of the year is not a time to dwell on all the terrible, no-good, very bad things that happened. It's time to celebrate the best of the year that was. So, as the year draws to a close, let’s look back at the past year with rose-coloured glasses to pick out the top-10 Canucks moments of 2017.
January 4th: Hotdog Horvat
Six-year-old Adley came to the Canucks game with a sign that said his dad would buy him a weiner dog if Bo Horvat scored a goal. The postscript at the bottom read, “I will name him Hotdog Horvat.” It took until the third period, but Horvat made his wish come true on the breakaway. Adley got his weiner dog and the legend of Hotdog Horvat was born.
January 20th: Henr1k
Henrik Sedin’s 1000th career point was pretty much perfect. In front of the home crowd, he scored the game-winning goal on his friend and former teammate, Roberto Luongo, with assists from his brother and Alex Edler. It almost single-handedly redeemed the otherwise regrettable 2016-17 season.
January 29th: Horvat’s All-Star debut
Horvat led the Canucks in scoring in the 2016-17 season, the first non-Sedin to do so since 2006. It made sense, then, that he was the Canucks’ representative at the All-Star Game. Horvat looked the part of an all-star, scoring a pair of pretty goals.
March 1st: Benning nails the trade deadline
In 2016, Canucks general manager Jim Benning stumbled at the trade deadline, finding no takers for Dan Hamhuis or Radim Vrbata. He came through in 2017, however, trading fan favourites Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen for Jonathan Dahlen and Nikolay Goldobin, two quality additions to the prospect pool.
March 25th: Boeser’s first NHL game
Canucks fans were desperate for anything positive as the 2016-17 season wrapped up, so Brock Boeser felt like an answer to prayer. Coming off a double overtime game with North Dakota the night before, he still found the energy to follow up on a Horvat rush and shove in the rebound for the game-winner in his home state of Minnesota. His 4 goals in the final 9 games of the season gave Canucks fans hope heading into the summer.
June 23rd: Canucks select Pettersson
The Canucks lost the draft lottery, but it may have been a blessing in disguise. With the fifth overall pick, the Canucks selected Elias Pettersson, who is showing signs of potentially being the best player in the 2017 draft. He’s having the best season by a teenager in the Swedish Hockey League since Peter Forsberg and could be the Canucks’ next Swedish star.
September 4th: Sportsnet 650 kicks off the radio wars
The addition of a second sports talk radio station and a new rights-holder has added new voices to the sports media landscape in Vancouver and has forced TSN 1040 to step up their game. There’s still work to be done — there are far too few female voices on either station — but the added competition is a good thing.
November 4th: Lucky Boeser
Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Matt Murray may have dismissed Brock Boeser’s hat trick as luck, but the Canucks rookie’s four-point night against the defending Stanley Cup champions served notice to the rest of the league that he was for real.
November 30th: Daniel’s 1000th point
Daniel Sedin’s 1000th career point wasn’t quite as poetic as Henrik’s — it came on the road and was a game-tying goal, not a game-winner; also, it didn’t come against Luongo — but it was still a fantastic moment and he received an emotional tribute prior to their next home game.
December 5th: Markstrom’s first career shutout
Jacob Markstrom played his first NHL game on January 23rd, 2011. 128 games and nearly seven years later, he finally posted his first career shutout. Markstrom downplayed the moment, but it clearly meant a lot to him and his teammates.
Big Numbers
85, 87 - Henrik and Daniel Sedin were the 85th and 87th players in NHL history to score 1000 points. Is there any doubt that the twins are first-ballot Hall of Famers?
25 - Brock Boeser already has 25 career goals in just 44 games. That’s a 47-goal pace over the course of a full 82-game season. The last time the Canucks had a player score 40+ goals was in 2011, when both Daniel Sedin and Ryan Kesler managed the feat. Can Boeser break 40 this season? Is 50 within reach? Remember when we were just hoping for 30 goals?
Stick-taps and Glove-drops
I’ll drop the gloves with TSN for not broadcasting Sweden’s first game of the World Juniors on television. It's the only game of the tournament that was only available on their TSN Go app. Instead, four of TSN’s five channels broadcasted the Russia/Czech Republic game leading into a rerun of their Plays of the Year show. Apparently it was because of a contract with Hockey Canada, which demands that any Team Canada game be broadcast on all TSN regional channels and the end of the Sweden/Belarus game would have bumped into the beginning of Canada's first game.
Stick-tap to all the Canucks fans who stuck with the team through one of the worst seasons in recent memory. 2016-17 was rough, but the 2017-18 season is shaping up to be, at the very least, more entertaining to watch. The lowest moments are the best times to jump on the bandwagon: it gives you street cred for the good times to come.
