Canucks: Selecting the all-decade team of the 2010s

Defencemen

Alexander Edler

Alexander Edler used the entire decade to become the franchise leader in points by a defenceman. The Swedish defender has spent his entire 14-year NHL career sporting the orca on his chest, and he’s inching closer to 400 career points.

To put it simply, The Eagle — as his teammates call him — has been the backbone of the D-core, and ultimately the team’s No. 1 blueliner throughout the entire 10-year period of the 2010s.

Edler plays the simple game but is extremely effective in any situation the coach puts in front of him. He logs a ton of minutes, as he plays on the top pair and on both first units of the power play and penalty kill.

He can be trusted to produce around 40 points and close to double-digit goals each season. He has only played a full 82-game season once in his career (2011-12), but that was his best season of all — where he managed a whopping 49 points and a career-high 11 goals.

The massive workload he faces every season usually forces Edler to miss a handful of games each season, but when he is playing, he eats pucks daily in the blocking column and knows how to throw a massive center ice hit.

He has earned the title as not only the best Canuck defender of the decade, but the best one in history. His loyalty to the city of Vancouver and the Canucks is 100 and his work here isn’t complete. We are lucky to have him help guide this team into the next decade.

-Brayden Ursel

Kevin Bieksa

While Edler was an easy choice to be the Canucks’ top defenceman of the past decade, the second half of this pairing was a more difficult choice. Arguments could be made for Chris Tanev or Quinn Hughes to be here, but we eventually settled on Kevin Bieksa.

The Canucks selected Bieksa (aka “Juice”) in the fifth round of the 2001 entry draft. He would go on to play for the Canucks from 2005 to 2015, and he was a core member of the 2011 team that went to the Stanley Cup Final.

While Bieksa was never the most offensively gifted defenceman, he was known for his role as a leader in the dressing room during some of the most successful seasons in franchise history. The first characteristic of Bieksa that comes to mind for most is his sense of humour, as he was the prank master in a room that included such characters as Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows.

That said, Bieksa could always be counted on to come through in the game’s biggest moments, including when he scored the infamous “stanchion goal” off a puck that ricocheted to the defenceman in overtime of game five of the 2011 Western Conference Final against the San Jose Sharks. The goal won the Canucks the series, and it sent them to the Cup Final.

Over four years after being traded to the Anaheim Ducks, Bieksa remains a part of Canucks Nation, having recently launched the “Kes and Juice Podcast,” in which he and Kesler tell stories of their time in the NHL, including many from their time with the Canucks. Bieksa loves Vancouver, and the city always loved him back. He deserves his spot on the all-decade team as much as anyone.

-Owen Gibbs