These are Pat Stapleton and Bill White. I’m not old enough to have seen them play live but I was fortunate enough to be able to watch them on the Summit Series DVDs and they were arguably Canada’s best defensive pairing and Coach Harry Sinden’s first choice when Team Canada needed to defend a lead. After sitting out the first game, they drew into the lineup for game two and played through the rest of the series. Though they only scored two points between them, they finished the series a combined +13 and were two of the only Canadians who had the speed and the skill to match up well with the Soviets.

Today, Alexandre Burrows received a $2,500 fine from the league for punching Zack Stortini while standing on the Canucks bench.

Burrows commented on his fine, and on Colin Campbell:

Years from now hockey’s trivia buffs will be asking the question, “Who is the only goalie to appear in an NHL All-Star game before wearing his team’s home uniform?”

John Garrett talks about the move to Vancouver with CJOR sportscaster Dan Russell.

Professional sports teams are always on the lookout for star athletes to build a franchise around. Vancouver Canucks are no different, but over the years they’ve been unable to find that player through the draft, or through trades, an athlete whose exploits gain him national exposure and someone the local customers will pay to come and watch. Quite by accident, in the first two months of the season, 20-year old Tony Tanti has become that star. Up until this season, Tanti’s NHL experience included 42 games – 39 with Vancouver after he was acquired from Chicago in a trade for Curt Fraser. Tanti was the Blackhawks first round pick in 1981, out of Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey Association. In Oshawa, he broke Wayne Gretzky’s rookie record for goals, and in a three-year major junior career, he scored 177 times. Clearly, the goal-scoring touch was there.

But never in the wildest imagination of Canucks fans did they expect Tony Tanti to score 20 goals in his first 21 games, or regularly read his name in the NHL scoring list near Gretzky’s. He has been nicknamed “Mr. T” and is frequently sought out for interviews and feature stories both here in Vancouver, and on the road. All the publicity hasn’t phased Tanti one bit. He has shown remarkable poise for one so inexperienced, taking each and every interview in his stride, even this latest one with CJOR Sports Director, Garry Raible.

Donald Richard Lever has been a model of durability and consistency in his seven seasons with the Vancouver Canucks. Since being chosen by Vancouver in the 1972 amateur draft, Lever has missed only five games, all last year when he suffered a broken cheekbone. In his first six seasons, he averaged 24 goals a year, and going into this season was the Canucks’ all-time leading scorer. Lever is one of those players who seem to score in streaks, and since he seems to be in the midst of one right now, CJOR Sports Director Garry Raible took that opportunity to talk hockey with the Canucks’ captain.

Rick Vaive is a former first-round draft pick of Vancouver. He was the centerpiece of the trade that landed us Tiger Williams and went on to have multiple 50-goal seasons with Toronto.

The following interview takes place a couple of weeks before his inaugural season with the Canucks.

Recently just came across a bushel of old Canucks magazines at a great discount price. I'm getting a kick out of a lot of the old articles and interviews - I figured some of the old-timers might get a kick out of these, and some of the new-timers might learn some things.

The following is Garry Raible interviewing former Canucks defenseman Dennis Kearns (who is tied with Lumme for the Canucks' defenseman points record and holds the defenseman assists record):

Raible: Dennis, are you in the midst of your toughest-ever pro season?

When Mike Gillis first came to town, it was on the premise that the Canucks needed to be competitive enough to make some noise in the playoffs. After signing Sundin, it looks like Gillis has done more than his fair share to this point (well, once Sundin gets over his extended flu and starts racking up the goals) but Vancouver is still very clearly at least a piece away from being able to compete with San Jose and Detroit.

With the trade deadline rapidly approaching, giddy Vancouver fans are ripe with excitement about which player is going to be Gillis’ first deadline acquisition – what rental player is going to put us over the top?

And, while Gillis has repeatedly said in interviews, articles, and media scrums that he is only looking for hockey moves and he is NOT going to make a rental move, this hasn’t stopped the usual deadline fervor.

Looking at Vancouver’s recent trade deadline history, this might not be the worst strategy.

To illuminate our blunders in this respect, I’ve composed a list of what I think are the five worst deadline deals in Canucks history.

Canuck fans hold a bevy of opinions. “Sedin sisters are useless”, “Sundin is slow and old”, “Kesler has stone hands”, “Johnson is an excellent PKer”, and the antitheses to these. Unifying opinions do exist, however. To me the most prominent is “Taylor Pyatt is useless”.
For the past two seasons I have defended Pyatt. He’s become the whipping boy and I have a natural tendency to find positives while others attempt to harp on the negatives (there are exceptions, see: Brown, Mike...all of them).