Captain Vancouver — Page 2

“What I admire most is his grace off the ice,” Monsignor Smith says today from Rome, where he’s finishing his doctorate in church law at the Gregorian University. He met Linden at the wedding of a mutual friend in 1997, and the priest and the NHLer formed a tight friendship (Linden is surrounded by Catholics: his older brother Dean converted to marry one, and Linden’s wife Cristina is also Catholic). “Whether he’s reading bedtime stories to sick kids or patiently signing autographs between sips of a latte at Starbucks,” says Smith, “he’s living proof that character and charity both count, no matter what else you’re good at.”

Linden, who turns 37 in April, has been in Vancouver for a long time now. He arrived here in 1988 as a lanky 18-year-old from Medicine Hat, where his parents Edna and Lane still live, running the family construction business (though they also spend a lot of time at the property Linden bought near Kalispell, Montana). It was Linden’s mother who gave him his first skates, his athletic genes and his love of hockey. “My mom is the real sports person in our family,” he says. “She was a real good fastball player, a pitcher. My mom’s dad, my grandpa, was a big hockey fan. I was glued to Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night.”

Linden developed his talent on the outdoor ponds of Alberta. There were no garage bands, no runs-in with the law, no find-oneself escapes to Thai beaches, just winning hockey with the Tigers, a gold medal at the 1988 World Junior Championships, and then bright lights, big city. “It’s crazy to think,” he recalls, “that I won a Memorial Cup in May, graduated from high school in June, and played my first NHL game in October.” A game with the team to whom—save for that three-year interlude—Linden has remained faithful for nearly two decades with his never-say-die play, his exemplary leadership and his charitable works (his foundation just helped to raise $4 million in Maple Ridge for Camp Goodtimes, which benefits children with cancer).

Indeed, when The Province ran an online, all-time Canuck poll in 2003, Linden demolished the competition in things like captaining a Game 7 (129 votes to Mark Messier’s 12) and player you’d most like to meet for a beer after the game (32 votes to Todd Bertuzzi’s 14). Linden laughs when I reveal the results to him, something apparently the Canucks media folks didn’t get around to doing, perhaps figuring the three-year, $6.3 million (U.S.) contract extension he signed in 2003 was consolation enough. “I’ve got a lot of family members out there,” he jokes; and they came through again in February 2007, voting him “Best Local Athlete” in the Westender’s Best of the City poll.

Yet while the city adores him, a glance at the Canucks’ own website, with its “Hall of Fame” rankings of former greats, points out the tawdry irony behind the Canucks’ relationship with him. While Linden is number 1 all-time in points and games played—and the public face and heart of the franchise to practically the whole damn city—he ranks number 11 on the site, sandwiched between Harold Snepsts and Kirk McLean. Former Canuck Stan Smyl ranks first and Thomas Gradin second—even though Linden outscores them all in everything.

“That’s mind-boggling,” says Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason, who won two National Newspaper Awards as a sportswriter for the Vancouver Sun. “When you add up everything Linden has done as a Canuck, he should be Number 1. I’ll tell you this: Trevor Linden’s jersey will eventually be retired—Thomas Gradin’s won’t be.”

The website doesn’t reveal the science of its rankings, but Vancouver historian Craig Bowlsby, whose Knights of Winter chronicles the game in B.C. from 1895 to 1911, sees the problem with Canuck memory as a function of interrupted history. “Most of Vancouver’s early professional hockey history burned up in 1936 with the Denman Arena,” says Bowlsby. “This is one reason there’s no continuity of tradition, as there is in Toronto. But Toronto has also had a top professional team for almost a hundred years, while Vancouver was without one from 1927 to 1970. Of course that doesn’t explain everything. I think those who look after the hockey torch need to be reminded of their past glory.”

When the Canucks got into the big leagues, in 1970, they went head-to-head with Buffalo at—of all things—a roulette wheel for the right to pick first. The Canucks would win if the roulette ball landed on an even number. It landed on 11, which became the jersey number of Gilbert Perreault, who went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Sabres. Vancouver chose Dale Tallon, who did not go on to a Hall of Fame career with the Canucks. No saviour there.

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