Photo Credit: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr

Former Vancouver Canucks winger Pavel Bure will be in Vancouver this week to help out with charities affiliated with the Canucks, according to Global BC’s Squire Barnes.

Barnes called this “fence mending” and is the first step towards his number 10 being eventually retired by the Canucks.

It was reported last November by the Province’s Jason Botchford that Bure’s jersey number was going to be retired by the Canucks, but there hasn’t been any news on that front since.

• Special Series: Why Pavel Bure’s Number Deserves to be Retired by the Vancouver Canucks

One argument fans against the retirement of Bure’s jersey have made is he doesn’t deserve the same kind of honour as Stan Smyl, Trevor Linden, and Markus Naslund because Bure wasn’t as active as the three former captains in the community.

The annual Canucks for Kids Telethon happens this Thursday on the TEAM 1040 and Sportsnet Pacific when the Canucks host the Edmonton Oilers. Each year, the Canucks have player wives and alumni members answering phone calls and you can bet Bure will be one of them.

Looks like Pavel Bure will be in Vancouver this week to help out with Canucks charities. The fence mending begins.

— Squire Barnes (@sbarnesglobal) April 3, 2013

This is the starting point on the road to Bure’s number eventually being retired. #10. Not #96.

— Squire Barnes (@sbarnesglobal) April 3, 2013

Photo Credit: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr

Pavel Bure’s number 10 should always remind us of what it is to pursue our passions with passion, honour and loyalty. image courtesy of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktbhTbc1pAo

The rest of this story, like the Russian Rocket himself, is a mercurial blur.  After the hangover of the ’94 Stanley Cup finals, the prevailing discussion is not of repeat finalists, or another 60 goal season for Pavel Bure, but rather of a lockout threatening the 1994/1995 season.  At stake is a number of now familiar issues.  Gary Bettman seeks to wrest fiscal control from the players. Salary caps, revenue sharing, salary arbitration are all at on the table.   Bettman even wants to strip players of disability and life insurance, as well as have players pay their own expenses to and from training camp.  Bure, his own career seemingly dogged by legal battles, reads the reports every day, wondering if he is back in Soviet Russia.

104 days of negotiation later, the league resumes play on January 20th, 1995 with tighter stipulations for rookie contracts and some concessions for the players, but it is clear that the NHL with Bettman has entered a new level of business scruples, one which the Russian Rocket understands well — “money first, play later”.  If this sounds all too familiar, remember that back then this was unheard of.

Bure and Adams were inseparable as linemates. Image Source: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktbhTbc1pAo

That said, Bure remains as loyal as anyone you’ll find to his teammates and his coach, Pat Quinn.  But, while the team’s core is largely intact from the Stanley Cup run of a year ago, Quinn steps back into the managerial role and places Rick Ley at the helm of the Canucks.  It is a tumultuous season filled with frustration, but the Canucks manage to make another playoff appearance, this time bowing out in the second round.  Bure’s longtime linemate  and friend Greg Adams is traded to Dallas in a pointless deal which yields the incompatible and oft-injured Russ Courtnall, the first in a slow trickle of trades which would change the allegiances and friendships forged by battle into a team without direction and split by personality clashes.

Bure’s contributions remain steady and spectacular.  He dazzles fans game in and game out with an array of shots, dekes and crunch time plays which entrench Bure as a local hero.  He transcends the sport, with every passing day.  But the Canucks are beginning to fade.

In the next three seasons, what was once a Stanley Cup contending team, is attempting to rekindle the magic from the 1994 run.  Most notably, the team’s goaltending is not the same.   Kirk McLean’s game is visibly absent amid whispers and rumours that teammate, Jeff Brown, is causing McLean’s marriage to fall apart.  Injuries to Gino Odjick limit his production, but before Brown is suspended for “disorderly conduct detrimental to the team” and covertly traded to Hartford, legend has it that Gino still makes time for a couple of parting gifts for Brown on behalf of his goaltender — two black eyes[1].

Quinn defended and was loyal to all of his players, but Messier and Orca Bay wanted things their way. Click on image to watch full video. Image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfkRRgLgyt8

Loyalty defined the Canucks, but this too is cracking.  Enigma, Alex Mogilny signs with the team for enormous dollars.  Controversial pugilist Donald Brashear joins the team because the Canucks have traded young goon, Alex Stojanov for a skilled, but raw Swede named Markus Naslund.  The team then flirts with injury and dressing room disaster by acquiring veterans such as Mike Ridley and Esa Tikannen whose better days are behind them but, like many aging players, fill the room with their voice.  All this is to cover up the massive hole that Bure leaves when he is out of the lineup, which is often now, for Bure is now plagued by a chronic knee problem.

Much like the space programs in the 90’s, the Russian Rocket is grounded.  After playing the full lockout season, Bure is never the same.  He plays a mere 15 games in 1995-1996, due to a crippling knee injury.  In 1996-1997, Bure plays just 63 games, looking a shadow of his former self.  Not by coincidence, the team misses the playoffs for the first time since Bure’s arrival.  It is the rock bottom the fans are all too accustomed to.  It is the cold, hard reality of physics.  What goes up, must come down.

Bure watches and hears the rumours as players leave through free agency and trades.  Coaching, from Rick Ley to Tom Renney, just isn’t as strong.  Pat Quinn leaves the Canucks.  Brian Burke takes over.  New players come in.  Experiments are attempted, and mostly fail.

Messier elbowed Linden to the head on the ice, then kicked him in the balls off the ice, three years later. Image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbCgd7TstbQ

In 1997-1998, the Canucks attempt a measure of desperation never seen in this market.  A mere three seasons displaced from losing to the New York Rangers in the finals, the Canucks do the unthinkable.  They invite Mark Messier to the city to speak of a contract.  Most fans don’t know what to think.  “The Moose” comes with pedigree and the associated tag of instant leadership, but are the Canucks willing to forgive and forget, particularly current captain Trevor Linden, who was the recipient of a Messier cheap shot in 1994, or was the cheap shot a sign of things to come?

Messier is signed, but this move has everything to do with Bure and the new arena in downtown Vancouver, at the time, GM Place.  Bure does not say much, but he does listen.  He listens to the sudden knocks on the team’s foundation.  Words like “character”, “leadership” and “poise” are bandied about in media forums.  People say the Canucks need someone to push the team further than before.   The signing is cloaked in the veil of wanting to get the most out of Bure on the ice, but silently there are whispers of Bure’s commitment to the team.  After two injury riddled, unsuccessful seasons, Bure once again must answer the resurfaced questions related to his character, his commitment, his leadership.

And Bure listens.

He hears the media when Jim Coleman writes:  “With due deference to Linden, Messier’s presence in the Canucks lineup is going to provide the team with the type of on-ice leadership Bobby Clarke gave to the Philadelphia Flyers when the Broad Street Bullies won the Stanley Cup two years in a row.”

He listens to teammates, like veteran Dave Babych who says, half jokingly, half seriously: “I’m going to play left wing this year! This takes us to the next level. It put us over the hump.” What hump? What level? “To the level we all want to be at. To the level we should be at.”

Even long time Canucks journalist Tony Gallagher applauds the move when he labels Mark Messier as “Mark Messier is a great player and perhaps the greatest leader in team sports in North America today.”

And who could argue?  Messier’s resume speaks for itself.  But Canucks fans do not know how he operates yet.

Mark Messier was really just a mess for the Canucks in his three years here. Image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2fw7161AUY

The season, Bure’s last as a member of the Canucks, is a return to vintage form.  Once again, Canucks fans witness the explosiveness, as once again Bure dons the #10 on the team’s new jerseys.   He plays a similar fearless game, but there is something missing.  Gone is the smile.  Gone is the passion.  Bure seems to be playing because he must.  Fans celebrate his every goal, but after the team returns from Nagano, where captain, Trevor Linden delivered a teary eyed address to the team in relinquishing his captaincy to Mark Messier, they see that his heart isn’t in it.

Writes Frank Brown of the New York Daily News: “Linden, asked to deal with Mark Messier’s hostile takeover of the dressing room, responded by surrendering the captaincy. Linden had been captain and leader, but the team Linden led never won a thing that mattered. Winning is a Messier trademark, winning has a price; and in this matter Linden paid with his pride”[2]

To this too, Bure listens.

Fans begin to suspect a nefarious side to Messier which they never encountered from a satellite perspective.  Whispers of Messier beginning to “take over” abound.  The whispers become screams of panic when, after 19 games and the Canucks mired in a ten game losing streak, GM and president Pat Quinn is fired. Coach, Tom Renney is fired soon after an 8-2 drubbing at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings and the Canucks at 3-13-2.   Replacing Quinn is Brian Burke, and replacing Renney is none other than former Rangers’ coach, and Messier henchman, Mike Keenan.

With the Messier/Keenan combination, a combination sturdily in the ears of new owner, John McCaw, the team is destined to move in a new direction.  The team’s “culture” is now in serious doubt.  This is the coach whose favourite son, Jeremy Roenick, wrote about him years later as being Mike Keenan, The NHL’s Last Great Asshole Coach[3].  It doesn’t take long for “Iron Mike” to prove this sentiment.  More dressing room leaks and rumours emerge.

According to the myth that is  Mike Keenan, following a spotty period of play now former captain, Trevor Linden, stands up in the middle of the dressing room to address his teammates.  Keenan coolly responds, “Trevor shut the f___ up.  What the h___ have you ever done?”.  Messier doesn’t even look up from taping his stick.

And Bure watches, and listens.

It would spell the beginning of the end for Linden’s departure  from Vancouver, as a week later the Canucks send him to Long Island for a young behemoth of a player named Todd Bertuzzi.  Kirk McLean, a player Keenan publicly describes as “the worst conditioned athlete he’s ever seen” is also sent packing to Carolina, and the Canucks begin an audition at the goaltending position that would last until the team would acquire Roberto Luongo.  Arturs Irbe, Garth Snow, Corey Hirsch and Sean Burke all play between the pipes for Vancouver this season, sometimes being pulled twice in one game.  McLean’s performance of game 1 in New York, the greatest single game any Canuck has ever played, is a distant memory.

Even Bure’s best friend, Gino Odjick, isn’t safe.

Kirk McLean, the last of the great hybrid goalies, needs a chair at centre ice when Bure’s number is raised. Image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diaC_n71Rlo

The following is one of many possibilities, but one which Odjick hinted at in a team 1040 interview some years after retirement.  It is not impossible to imagine.

A few months after the Linden trade, and after not receiving much playing time, the always outspoken fan favourite Gino Odjick marches into Keenan’s office two days before a game with the New York Islanders, demanding to know why he isn’t playing.  In the middle of the conversation, Keenan’s phone rings.  As Keenan attempts to answer it, Odjick glowers at him and threatens, “You better not pick up that goddamned phone.  I’m in the middle of f___ing talking to you.”  Keenan smirks and withdraws his hand away from the phone and a day later Odjick is traded  for defenseman Jason Strudwick, in another deal with the Islanders.

Ironically the Canucks play New York in Vancouver, and the teams suit up both players.  Odjick lays a beating on Strudwick for good measure, and the fans at GM Place chant his name, one last time.

Later, Odjick would have this to say about Keenan and Messier:

He (Messier) just wants to destroy everything so he gets the power. He didn’t break a sweat for the first 10 games and just waited for   Tom Renney and Pat Quinn to get fired. He talks to ownership all the time and he’s responsible for Keenan, and he’s part of most of the trades. Look what happened with (ex-Canuck and current Islander) Trevor (Linden) when Keenan gave him (hell). Did (Messier) come over to him and say, ‘Look, Trev, we’re with you?’ He didn’t say a word. How can you be captain like that? How can the team be together that way? He’s not with the players. He’s the one who controls everything. I don’t blame Keenan for what’s happened. Everything he does, he does in the name of winning. But everything that . . . Messier does is for more power. They signed him to help us, but all he wanted was most of us out of there so he could bring in his own people. He just wanted to tear it apart and do it his way.[4]

And Bure watches, and still listens.

The destruction of the team everyone has grown to love is complete by season’s end.  Even Alex Mogilny seems hostile and wants out.  Bure has seen, has heard enough.  He no longer cares about a team that has lost respect for the blood that loyal Vancouver Canucks have shed on behalf of a city.  He looks around and sees betrayal at every turn.

There are newcomers in Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi ready to step in and take his place.  A “C” on an enemy’s jersey.

There is a distant memory, fans chanting his name and a goal against Calgary… an old Arena on Renfrew… a GM and owners who fought tooth and nail for him, but now won’t pay him what he’s worth… best friends now on other teams… Jim Robson’s voice… even that has become Jim Hughson now…

the ring of a goalpoast.

In Bure’s head Jim Robson’s voice goes on perpetually, jumping into the rush alongside him as the fans, the same fans who loved him,  turn on the radios and televisions to lament about Bure’s holdout season.  They hate him.  He’s turned on the city.  Messier talking about continuing on for the love of the game, for loyalty to his teammates.  Something about commitment… leadership.

Bure was captain of the Russian Federation Olympic team, with names like Fedorov in the lineup. Image Source: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRT8465obtQ

Bure’s last game as a Vancouver Canuck is as a captain of the team.  It is not the captain of the Canucks, mind you, but the captain of the team that brought him all this way.  The curtain fully fallen, and the soviets fully exposed, a team laden with Russian talent takes to the ice in Nagano for the Olympic games.  They are playing rival Finland.  Most Canucks fans are glued to the screens, waiting for Bure to fail.  Wishing him malice.  Hoping his knee gives out.  But Bure, the captain, shows everyone what it meant when an aging star was given the captaincy over him.  The captain of Russia puts on a show.  He scores.

And then he scores again.  And again.  And again.And again.

The five goal outburst serves notice to the NHL that Bure does indeed have game left in his legs, provided his heart is in it.  Shortly thereafter, the Canucks do trade the Russian Rocket to the Florida Panthers.  Bure’s legacy there, playing with his brother Valeri, and shortly afterwards, in New York where his first goal is setup by none other than Petr Nedved showcased Bure for the rest of the league as a hall-of-famer.  But in Vancouver, only the smoldering wreckage of a potential dynasty remains.Some fans perennially wishing he were back in Vancouver, wearing the number 10, others, like Don Cherry on CBC’s Coaches’ Corner, embittered to their grave.  There is no in-between.

Don’t just take it from me.  Hear what those who really know him have to say in Audio of Pavel Bure and Jim Robson featuring the voices of Trevor Linden, Jim Robson, Pat Quinn, Arthur Griffiths and Pavel Bure himself.  Perhaps the quote of the clip is Robson’s own voice who simply expresses the fact that Canucks fans “forgot”.

Bure’s number 10 deserves to go up to the rafters at Rogers arena. Image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRT8465obtQ

Retiring Bure’s number restores the gap that exists, ties in the brilliance of a franchise’s best player to the most tumultuous time in the city’s history – a time of great change equivalent to a revolution.  On the one hand it is a time of old-time hockey, when players had no say and played because they were lucky to be here, but on the other it is a time of a growing empowerment of the worker, a realization that without the player, there can be no league, and surely, that without Bure there would be no Canucks, no Rogers Arena, and no expectations in Vancouver.

And what expectations do we have?  Winning, yes, but also that hockey is more than mere sport.  It is the world’s most beautiful sport, when played the right way.  And what is it to play it the right way?  It is to be loyal to one another, to play, and live as Bure did — fearlessly.  Bure was loyal to his teammates, and yes, to a Vancouver he believed in, perhaps even, one which we have discovered only now.  Pavel Bure.  All we wanted was forever.

And now we can have it.

Pavel Bure‘s star shone brightly in Vancouver from launch to landing. Image source: YouTube — originally posted by Canuckfan23. Edited by Sandro Fracca

In 1992, the Canucks begin their season with Pat Quinn as their full-time head coach, President and GM and under the watch of Stan Smyl‘s #12 now hanging in the rafters of the Pacific Coliseum.  Smyl, now serving as an assistant coach with Rick Ley, leaves a legacy as an exemplary leader with a rare combination of skill, brawn and effort — a role which young Trevor Linden appears to be embracing with aplomb.  Canucks fans, while they don’t realize it at the time, are spoiled with two of sports greatest leaders, Smyl and Linden, holding the mantle for the team in consecutive decades.

Not to be outdone, Pavel Bure has impressed his teammates as well as millions of fans from all around the continent.  His gifts are many:  uncanny acceleration, deft stick handling, accurate and booming shot combined with a powerful skating stride.  This is what we notice.  What goes slightly unnoticed is his loyalty to his teammates, and his ability to elevate his game when it matters the most.

For a while, Bure represented everything good about the west coast. Image: Upper Deck, 1992

Playoffs are not kind to rookies, but the Calder Cup winning Bure notches 6 goals and 4 assists in a two round playoff run a season ago, after a 34 goal in 65 game regular season campaign.  He seems itching to get going as the ’92 season commences.  After each practice, Bure reminds the goalies of how many goals he scores by drawing a massive number on the chalkboard in the dressing room.

The number before the season begins is a different one.  It reads “50″, or, the amount of goals Pasha plans on scoring in the NHL this year.

Most people feel the feat is impossible for a variety of reasons.  Chief among these reasons is the dreaded “sophomore slump” which occupies the lines on a local radio station called “Sportstalk” with then-host, Dan Russel.  The question is on everyone’s mind.

“Go ahead caller, you’re on the air…”

“Uhh, hi.  Long time listener, first time caller…”

“Hi. Go ahead”

“How many goals do you think Pavel Bure can get this season?”

Pushed to the exterior regions of fan consciousness are the questions of player movement.  The team is expected to score in bundles.  They are expected to win games.  People are talking about the Stanley Cup, not as an obscure possibility, but as though it is a matter of time.

But a 50 goal season still seems unthinkable.  It has never happened in Vancouver before.  The closest any Canuck player has ever gotten was Tony Tanti‘s 45 goals.  This is the 90′s.  Canucks teams are more known for futility in the scoring department than productivity.  50 goals is a marker reserved for other players — those special players that other teams have, with names like Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Pat Lafontaine, or Mario Lemieux.

For Bure, however, the hastily scrawled “50″ on the Canucks dressing room chalkboard is no mere pipe dream or brash dream of a trash-talking youngster.  It is more like a rough estimate.

With Bure in the lineup, and the team winning games, the Canucks team unity is never better. Image source: Opus Productions Inc. 1994

When the Canucks open the season at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, the Oilers are a shadow of their cup-winning 80′s teams while the Canucks are sporting a lineup that would quickly become, arguably, the best lineup the city has ever known.  And, in what would become a fairly typical evening for Pavel Bure, he scores a goal and sets up another in a tightly contested 5-4 win for his team.  Picking up where he left off from last season, Bure steals pucks from unsuspecting forwards, and carves up the Oiler defence all night en route to terrorizing goalie Bill Ranford.

As usual, Trevor Linden leads the media scrum after the game, and as is quickly becoming evident, serves as Pavel Bure’s media buffer, fielding more questions about the Russian Rocket than he fields about his own game.  The answers are typically Lindenesque:

“Well, he’s a pretty special player.”

“We knew as soon as he stepped on the ice he was ready.”

“You can see he really wants to be here.”

“He’s just one of the guys, and we’re glad he’s here.”

“You have to be patient.  He’s a young guy.”

To honour Bure is to honour the best team ever compiled in the city of Vancouver. Image Source: Opus Productions Inc. 1994

Canucks fans are glad for it as well.  A few days later, the Canucks win the second leg of the back-to-back series with the hated Oilers and score another 5 goals on Ranford, this time allowing only 2.  Bure registers an assist and looks threatening all night, but fans at the home opener are unimpressed.  Again, the intense Vancouver media scrums ensue.

Bure is asked about the “sophomore slump”, even though he doesn’t even know what the word “sophomore” means.  Reporters question his commitment.  Are Russians truly suited to the NHL game?  Fans wonder if the previous season was a mirage.  Linden defends Pavel again.  Quinn reminds everyone that it’s early in the season.  The frailty of the Vancouver market’s psyche emerges.

The following game against division rivals, the Winnipeg Jets, proves to silence the critics  for a long time thereafter.

As the first line of Linden, Geoff Courtnall and Sergio Momesso get off the ice for their first change, Bure’s line of himself, Cliff Ronning and Greg Adams emerge.  Bure takes off like a greyhound chasing a rabbit.  Receiving a Ronning pass from almost behind him, Bure kicks it up past a defender at the Winnipeg blue line.  Greg Adams, attempting to cross over to create an another angle for a pass or rebound, should there be one, unwittingly draws a third defender to Bure.

Any other player would be sandwiched between two defenders.  But not Bure.

Bure, meanwhile is already thinking about how to slip past two large men who see a brief opportunity to ground the rocket.   A new gear emerges.  A powerful stride out of nowhere.  A lunge. A blur.  Gasps from the crowd.  With a move straight out of the future of the game itself, Bure times a gap between the two defenders, and breaks in alone on Bob Essensa. Within seconds the score is 1-0 while the party at the Pacific Coliseum is on, defenders still trying to figure out who to blame.

By the end of the game, the Canucks have 8 goals on two different goalies, and Pavel Bure has half of them.  4 goals on 10 shots on net and one helper.  Winnipeg Jets own exciting rookie nicknamed “The Finnish Flash”, soon to shatter rookie scoring records in the NHL, is held off the scoresheet.  The notion of Bure’s supposed sophomore slump is not even an afterthought.  Through three games, Pavel Bure has 5 goals, and 3 assists.

Somewhere, behind a cherry wood desk in Vancouver, sits a big silver-haired Irishman snipping the end off of a Havana cigar.

A typical Bure scene. One beaten defender, and one fallen down, Bure protecting the puck en route to a goal. Source: Opus Productions Inc. 1994

Doubters and cynics fall from the radar of the Vancouver sports scene like cockroaches after a fumigation as do the myriad of goaltenders who fall prostrate at Pavel Bure’s knees all season long, en route to what is the greatest single season performance in Canucks history. The brash, gum-chewing Russian Rocket electrifies fans everywhere.  Sometimes he does it because he must, and other times he does it because he can.  Canucks win lopsided results and run-and-gun games on the strength of a back end led by Vezina candidate Kirk McClean and loyal blue-liner Doug Lidster, but mostly on the backs of the potent offense Pat Quinn has assembled.

In what would go down as the highest scoring season in NHL history, 14 players tally at least 50 goals, and 20 players go over the 100 point marker.  As future hall-of-famers in their prime abound on every team, goaltenders and defenders are under siege everywhere teams go.  It is the perfect climate for Bure to accomplish his goal of a 50 goal season.  Canucks fans are gushing with pride and tickets are very hard to come by.  Bure dangles, rifles, dodges and dekes his way to not just 50, but a staggering 60 goals. He finishes the season fifth on the list of scorers behind Mogilny and Selanne’s amazing 76 goals, Mario Lemieux’s 69 and Luc Robitaille‘s 63.

The 46 wins and 101 points are both Canucks records.  The 346 goals they score  is a feat never since duplicated by the franchise and stands as the team record.  Bure’s fingerprints are all over the season’s accomplishments.  Despite the promising record and impressive goal differentials, the Canucks are, again, eliminated by what is this time an inferior L.A. Kings team.  An impressive season seems all for naught as Canucks fans ponder how an L.A. Kings team that lets in more goals than they score against the Canucks can go on to the Stanley Cup finals to fall to a team which Vancouver stood a chance of beating.

Another year, another disappointment… same, sad old tale.

—

The following season sees the Canucks embroiled in a bitter contract dispute with young Czech centre Petr Nedved, who has asked for more money than the team seems willing to part with.  In fairness to Nedved, the third year player is fresh off of a 39 goal season of his own and, in the shadow of Bure’s immense campaign, has not truly received the recognition he perhaps deserves.  It hasn’t helped that at the end of last season’s playoff loss with the Kings, Nedved, like a sentimental 11 year-old fan, asked for Wayne Gretzky‘s stick.  It was a request even the Great One himself, likely dimly aware of the social repercussions which would ensue for the young Czech,  hesitated to fulfill at the time.  To the general disgust of his teammates and his fans, Nedved skates away triumphantly with Gretzky’s shining silver stick after the handshake lineup, visions of millions of dollars worth of a new contract dancing in his mind.

It proves to be his final game as a Canuck.

Nedved coincidentally becomes a Canadian citizen, and latches onto the national hockey program.  While the Canucks open their ’93 season, he fills out a roster of misfits on their way to a silver medal performance at the World Championship.  The contract negotiation is hostile.  In any other year, a young 39 goal scorer with 73 points in a season would be a player to lock up for a very long time.  The Canucks, for the first time, have an embarrassment of riches on offense.  The team plays hardball.  The fans watch.  They know.  Bure is next.

The Canucks prove to be a difficult negotiator.  The owners are still small-time in a small market.  They do not cave to Nedved’s demands.  Without warning, the St. Louis Blues sign Nedved to a contract well over what the Canucks are offering.  Furious, the Canucks demand serious recompense for the promising rookie.  Now Nedved is worth a name like Brendan Shanahan.  He yields Craig Janney, who later becomes defenders Jeff Brown, and Brett Hedican as well as young grinder Nathan Lafayette.  At first, it makes little sense, but soon the pieces prove to put the Canucks over the top.

Bure’s #10 goes up to the rafters, but his buddy Gino Odjick‘s name will now also be forever linked to greatness. Image source: Opus Publications Inc. 1994

Another season of highlights ensues for Pavel Bure.  This time no one in the league can match his pace.  The precision with which he times his bursts of speed is uncanny.  He finds holes where there are seemingly none.  He exposes goalies for weaknesses which previously did not exist.  He is a work of athletic  art, a composer of hockey brilliance.  Canucks fans are transfixed by his every move.  We feel the game with Linden’s heart, but we play it with Bure’s passion, his willingness, and his ferocity of spirit.  He is as brave as another Canuck who we love dearly, his best friend off the ice, Gino Odjick.

If we can make any judgement on the person who is Bure, we must rely on his friends.  Thus far beloved captain Trevor Linden has supported and applauded Bure as a teammate throughout his entire young career.  But now, the Canucks have another superstar on the team, one known for destroying the morale of his opponents not with his stick, but with his hands.  In an interview with the Vancouver Province, diminutive centre Cliff Ronning explains how important the role of the enforcer is to the team, a message the current-day Canucks would be wise to understand:

Having a guy like Gino around really makes all of us play bigger and tougher. We aren’t afraid of initiating battles, because we know Gino is with us. There is a noticeable difference in team mentality since Gino’s arrival.  ~Cliff Ronning

Odjick ensured that whatever happened, the Canucks would be respected by opposing players. Image courtesy of http://canuckslegends.blogspot.ca/

In case you’ve forgotten the kind of man Gino was, click here:  classic gino odjick _ and prepare to be amazed, either again, or for the first time.

The tale of Gino Odjick and Pavel Bure’s friendship is one which Jason Botchford has already eloquently described in his November 8, 2012 article for the Vancouver Province, but what is left unmentioned is what this says of Bure and the real reason why the jersey retirement needs to be done.  Where people fail to see the connection lies herein.

No matter what, Gino represents what every Canadian who has ever played the sport has always known.  Gino is the guy who lacks the skill, but you love to play with him and never deny him an opportunity because of his loyalty and friendship.  He is your favourite teammate, and our favourite Canuck.  With each Canuck goal is a picture of Gino, his gap-toothed grin celebrating his best friend’s every success.  It is as though the Bure goals and Gino fights go hand in hand.

Gino wreaks havoc on games not to prove himself, but to make sure that his teammates are supported.  And, if anyone is to make the mistake of handling his best friend in a way he doesn’t like, it is that unfortunate player’s turn to take the beating of his life.  It is the way the NHL has always been and what allows the stars to be stars.  Pavel’s role as unstoppable hockey force, is only made possible by the immovable hockey object that is Gino.

Now, during every Canucks game, even before a referee blows a whistle, the game is played under Pavel Bure’s law, and Gino is the enforcer.

The season is up and down for the team, but Bure is not to be denied.  As the Canucks enter the 1994 playoffs, no one is better than Pavel this year.  A second consecutive 60 goal season this time leaves him standing alone atop the leaderboard of goal-scorers.  Of the 60 goals, most are scored at even strength, during meaningful moments of meaningful games.  He stretches defenders everywhere and embarrasses world-class and sub-par goalies equally.  The team finishes with fewer points than a season ago, but seem more resilient, more tested and more hungry than ever before.

In the first round of the playoffs the favoured Calgary Flames are giving the Canucks everything they can handle.  The series goes seven games, and is played in Calgary’s Saddledome.  Pavel Bure already has 2 goals in the game, now into its third overtime, with Vancouver fans back home having visions of another early round exit.  Years of doubt and being down 3-1 in the series early on will do this.

But then this happens:   Canucks Classics_ Pavel Bure Game 7 OT Goal – 4.30.94 – HD.

The prophetic call by Tom Larscheid, the triple overtime, the hattrick in the seventh game… it is precisely these types of moments that makes Pavel Bure a legend in Vancouver. Image source: Opus Publications, 1994

Like he has done so many times before, Bure finds space in the middle of the blue line to receive a perfect pass, and speeds in cold on Calgary netminder, Mike Vernon.   He makes absolutely no mistake, as he undresses the Flames legend and former Conn Smythe trophy winner, sending the Canucks on the wild ride that would be the Stanley Cup Finals against the New York Rangers.  Tom Larscheid’s call as “the biggest goal in the history of the franchise” is no mere hyperbole.

On the way to one of the best Stanley Cup Finals in the history of the NHL, Bure leads the team in scoring with 16 goals and 31 points, falling a Nathan Lafayette goalpost away from winning it all for the city.

Immediately following the close loss, the city’s fans, unsure of what to make of it all, fracture in a delirious drunken party, destroying property and cascading mayhem onto the city’s streets until the late hours of the night.  Chaos is everywhere, but so too is the feeling that what is lost in the night’s finals is much more than the Stanley Cup.

The prevailing feeling is that what was just witnessed was nothing short of magic, a fairytale ride that wasn’t supposed to end this way — that the best player the Canucks have ever known, was supposed to end the suffering, supposed to bring the cup home.  Instead, the next morning, amid the physical ruins of Robson street, the hungover fans waking up in holding cells, the peaceful observers still sleeping in their Bure #10 jerseys, is the breeze of another Spring in Vancouver searching for answers.

Next and final segment:  Forever a Canuck