Top 5: Canucks Stories of 2008

It was quite the year for the Vancouver Canucks, a year that ran the emotional gamut. Hopefulness, tragedy, bafflement, bemusement, resignation, excitement, nostalgia, disbelief - these, and more, were the feelings to which Canucks fans were subjected in 2008. With that, let's count down the Top 5 Canucks Stories of 2008:

5. Canucks Give Roberto Luongo the 'C' (But He's Not Allowed to Wear It)
Just over a week before the start of the 2008-09 season, Coach Vigneault announces that the Canucks' keeper will also be their captain. To call this move unorthodox is an understatement - no goalie had captained his team in over 60 years, and the NHL has a rule that forbids a goaltender from acting as the captain during a game. Luongo, therefore, does not wear the 'C' on his jersey (though his new helmet features the letter prominently) or speak to officials during the game. Luongo justified his selection by reeling of five shutouts and an 11-5-2 record in 19 games before suffering a groin injury in a late-November game.

4. Naslund, Morrison Depart as UFAs
It was the end of an era. At one time Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison and Todd Bertuzzi were the most feared line in hockey. With the now-nomadic Bertuzzi already long gone, the final 2/3rds of the West Coast Express played their final season with the Canucks. Former captain Naslund left for the New York Rangers, while Morrison signed with Anaheim where he was (briefly) reunited with GM Brian Burke. Naslund left as one of the best all-time Canucks, holding the club record for goals and points.

3. RIP Luc Bourdon
Tragedy struck the Canucks community on May 29 when 21-year old prospect Luc Bourdon was killed in a motorcycle accident in New Brunswick. Bourdon's career had been on the upswing, as he played 27 games with the Canucks during the 07-08 season. He was honoured in a moving pre-game ceremony before the Canucks home opener this season.

2. Mats Sundin (Finally!) Signs With the Canucks
The Swedish all-star managed to please not only Canucks fans, who are ecstatic, but also countless hockey fans who had grown sick of his 6-month saga as an unrestricted free agent. The Canucks originally offered Sundin a 2-year, $20 million contract in July. Sundin eventually signed with the team in December. In the meantime many deadlines were set and missed, teams dropped from the Sundin derby like flies, and the field was whittled down to the Rangers or Canucks. In the end Vancouver won what was essentially a war of attrition, leveraging its cap space and relatively strong start to the season over other teams which were forced to abandon the Sundin chase. Sundin's impact on the club remains to be seen - his signing, however, was certainly one of the huge storylines of 2008.

1. Canucks Miss Playoffs, Fire Nonis, Hire Gillis
Okay, so I'm cheating here by rolling three stories into one. Nonetheless, they are interlinked and as such I'm going with it anyway. The Canucks stumbled to the finish line in 07-08, sliding all the way to 11th in the Western Conference. This represented a huge step backward for the club, which had hoped to build on it promising 06-07 campaign in which they made the second round of the playoffs. Firing Dave Nonis, who, y'know, was only responsible for fleecing the Florida Panthers out of Roberto Luongo, was a surprising and seemingly knee-jerk reaction from the team's owners and drew some criticism from fans. Hiring a player agent with no GM experience had fans sweating bullets.

Gillis has had a wacky but effective start to his tenure. He made his monstrous pitch to Sundin, and then stuck to his guns in his dogged pursuit of the Big Swede. He made a goalie the captain. And he introduced a wide range of unusual measures to the club, including monitoring players' sleep patterns and hiring a dietician to assess their individual nutritional needs (I think they put Kyle Wellwood on the celery diet). Gillis stopped short of group meditation and burning incense in the locker room, and so far his moves are looking pretty shrewd. The Sundin and Luongo cases have already been discussed in this post. His other player-friendly moves, which also included upgrading the players' lounge at GM Place, have apparently been well received by players and helped build a sense of trust between players and the organization.

Finally, Gillis made some other sound hockey moves. He plucked Kyle Wellwood from waivers, and the reclamation project has 14 goals in 36 games (insert me blowing my own horn here). He signed Pavol Demitra, who has been solid thus far in 08-09. And, in what may turn out to be the Canucks' best draft pick in a decade, he drafted Cody Hodgson with the 10th overall pick in the 2008 draft. Based on his excellent NHL training camp, stellar OHL season and brilliant World Junior Championships, Canucks fans have every reason to be optimistic about the up-and-coming prospect. There is, then, silver-lining to the disastrous conclusion to the 07-08 season. Even Don Cherry agrees!



Honourable Mention: Trevor Linden Retires, Canucks Retire His #16
I know it seems shocking that this story did not make the Top 5, but like I said the Canucks had a momentous 2008 for both good and bad reasons. No story has occupied 'Nucks and Pucks more than the retirement of Captain Canuck. Linden was the subject of this blog's first ever post, and of a two-part Top 10 list of his greatest moments upon his the retirement of his #16 jersey in December. Nonetheless, it does not rank as one of the top five most important stories of the year - though symbolically for the history of the franchise it would likely rank as number one. The fact that I am attempting to justify its exclusion from this list speaks to the huge impact that Linden has had on the Canucks organization and its fans - but his retirement had a lesser role in defining the Canucks' fortunes in 2008 than did the five events on this list.