The National Hockey League announced on December 14th that they would honour each organization by selecting their quarter-century team.
The selection committee consists of a panel of media, retired players, and executives specific to each club. They will select two teams of three forwards, two defencemen, and one goaltender. One team will be listed per day, starting with the St. Louis Blues on December 30th and rolling out until January 31st with the Utah Hockey Club.
The Vancouver Canucks have to wait until Tuesday, January 21st, to see who the NHL selects for them. However, we feel there are a handful of players that we can confidently project will be making the Canucks’ quarter-century team:
Daniel & Henrik Sedin
These two really shouldn’t come as a shock. Daniel and Henrik will undoubtedly be named to the quarter-century team.
Out of the eight Canucks Hall of Famers – Cam Neely, Igor Larionov, Pavel Bure, Mark Messier, Mats Sundin, Roberto Luongo and Daniel and Henrik Sedin – the twins are the only ones to have played their entire careers (17 seasons) in Vancouver. Both players have logged over 1,300 games (Henrik with 1,330 and Daniel with 1,306) in a Canucks uniform and registered over 1,000 points (Henrik with 1,070 and Daniel with 1,041). They sit atop the Canucks’ record books, with a 285-point lead on Markus Naslund and a 603-point lead on the top active player, Elias Pettersson.
The twins are the only two Canucks to win the Art Ross trophy for the player who finishes with the most points during said season, doing so in back-to-back seasons. (Henrik in 2009-2010 with 29 goals, 83 assists for 112 points, and Daniel in 2010-2011 with 41 goals, 63 assists for 104 points).
They each added another award in the same years they won the Art Ross trophy. Henrik was the first and only Canuck to have won the Hart Memorial Trophy, recognized as the MVP of the NHL, while Daniel joined Markus Naslund as the only two to have won the Ted Lindsay Award, which is awarded to the most outstanding player voted on by the players.
Their contributions wore on further than just the ice, as in 2017-2018, the duo would share the King Clancey Memorial Award, given to the player who best demonstrates leadership qualities on and off the ice and humanitarian contributions within their community. Henrik won the same award two seasons prior in 2015-2016.
Daniel was known as more of the goal scorer of the two twins. He holds the Canucks record for goals with 393, 47 ahead of Naslund and 153 ahead of Henrik. However, he was still very much a playmaker. Daniel only had one 40-goal season, two 30-goal seasons, but had four 50+ assists seasons.
Henrik was the playmaker. He leads the Canucks in all-time assists with 830, 182 ahead of his brother, who’s second. Henrik only had two seasons above 20 goals but had six seasons with 60+ assists.
With all the accolades, both recognized by the team and the NHL, there is no doubt that both Daniel and Henrik Sedin will be among the first quarter-century team for the Canucks.
Roberto Luongo
Roberto Luongo deserves to tend the crease for the Canucks’ quarter-century team.
He only played eight seasons in Vancouver after being acquired from the Florida Panthers in 2006. Luongo went his first two seasons with the Canucks starting over 70 games, which just seems unheard of in today’s NHL. He suited up in 448 games as a Canuck, recording 252 wins, 137 losses, 50 overtime losses and 38 shutouts.
Luongo holds most of the goaltending records in Canucks history. He has the most wins as a goaltender, despite playing 68 games less than second place, Kirk McLean, and nearly doubles the field in shutouts with 38, while McLean has 20. Luongo finishes second in goals against average (2.36 GAA) and save percentage (.919 S%), trailing just Cory Schneider, who has a 2.20 GAA and a ..927 S%. However, Luongo’s numbers are more impressive, considering he is not far behind Schneider while playing 350 more games.
His two best seasons in Vancouver were his first year (2006-2007) and the year of their Stanley Cup run (2010-2011).
In 2006-2007, Luongo started 75 games, recording a 47-22-6 record with a 2.28 GAA and a .921 S%, with five shutouts. This season earned him second in Vezina trophy voting, only losing to Martin Brodeur, who surprisingly topped these numbers with a 48-23-7 record, a 2.18 GAA and a .922 S% with 12 shutouts.
In 2010-2011, Luongo started 60 games, holding a 38-15-3 record with a 2.11 GAA and a .928 S% with seven shutouts. These numbers earned him third place in Vezina trophy voting, falling to Tim Thomas and Pekka Rinne. Luongo continued that strong play into the playoffs, where he recorded a 15-10 record with a 2.56 GAA and a .914 S% with four shutouts.
While he was never able to bring the Stanley Cup to Vancouver, he came one game shy of doing so and is the only Canucks netminder in the Hockey Hall of Fame. All of this, along with the team accolades, guarantees his spot on the quarter-century team.
Quinn Hughes
It seems odd throwing a 25-year-old who’s only played six seasons in the NHL on the quarter-century team. But this organization has never seen a defenceman of Hughes’ calibre.
Hughes has recorded 50 goals and 320 assists for 370 points in just 396 career games. He’s pushing a point per game as a defenceman. Why it’s not outlandish to already put him among the Canucks greats is because he’s already leading in some categories for defencemen.
In under 400 games, Hughes sits 10th in goals by a defenceman; however, he sits just eight away from sixth place and 49 behind the leader Alex Edler. Last season, he passed Mattias Öhlund for second in points by a Canucks defenceman with 370, only trailing Edler but should surpass him by the end of the season as he’s just 39 points behind. Hughes already passed Edler this season for the most assists by a Canucks defenceman and is only adding to his totals.
In his first season as Vancouver Canucks captain, Hughes took home the franchise’s first James Norris trophy for the first time. In fact, Hughes was the first Canucks defenceman to ever finish top three in voting. He finished the 2023-2024 campaign with 17 goals and 75 assists for 92 points in 82 games. In terms of season records, this Hughes season broke his own record set in 2022-2023 (76 points) when he broke his other record he set in 2021-2022 (68 points).
Hitting all these franchise records despite sitting 15th in games played by a defenceman earns Hughes a spot on the Canucks’ quarter-century team.
Honourable Mentions:
Markus Naslund probably deserves to be considered as one of the locks. He spent 12 of his 16 seasons in Vancouver, playing in 884 games, scoring 346 goals and 410 assists for 756 points. He served as the Canucks captain for eight seasons from 2000-2008. During that time, Naslund was recognized by his peers with the Ted Lindsay trophy in 2002-2003 after a 48-goal, 104-point campaign. He shares the franchise lead in goals in a single game with four, joining Bobby Schmautz as the only two to have done it twice.
We spoke about Alex Edler a lot earlier, as Hughes has broken all of his records. Edler still leads the Canucks blue line in points, although it will surely be broken soon. One record that Edler will hold for a while is games played by a defenceman with 925, sitting fourth for all skaters behind the Sedins and Trevor Linden.
Before Hughes, there was Edler. Before Edler, there was Mattias Öhlund. Öhlund suited up in 770 games as a Canuck, scoring 93 goals and 232 assists for 325 points. Edler had to surpass Öhlund’s goal and point record on his way to becoming the franchise leader in those categories for a defenceman. Öhlund won the Babe Pratt Trophy, awarded to the organization’s top defenceman in 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2006.
Ryan Kesler might be the best defensive forward in the franchise’s history. He became the first Canucks player to win the Frank J. Selke Trophy in 2010-2011, after finishing as the runner-up the previous season and third place the season before that. Offensively, Kesler sits 16th in points with 182 goals and 211 assists for 393 points as a Canuck, but has a season that puts him in the top-10 for goals in a season with 41 – the same year he won the Selke.
