Blink, and your dream is gone
No Canucks players from 2011 have been back to the final, and few to the playoffs
A tweet from hockey writer and statistical analyst Tyler Dellow earlier in the week got me thinking.
Dellow posted to social media: “Good way to realize how hard it is to get to the final is to go back and look at a team that lost and count the players who get another shot.”
I decided to take him up on that offer and examine the post-season histories of the 20 players in uniform for the Vancouver Canucks on the night of June 15, 2011.
While head coach Alain Vigneault returned to the final in 2014 with the New York Rangers and assistant coach Rick Bowness was there a year later as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning staff, not a single player on the Canucks roster in 2011 has made a return trip to the National Hockey League championship series.
That 2011 team had two cracks to get its hands on the trophy and forever change the lives of every one of the players.
Somehow, though, those moments slipped through their grasp. Twice the Canucks were 60 minutes away from winning it all, and, now, six years down the road, it’s clear just how fleeting success can be.
What’s truly remarkable about the 2011 team is how little playoff success any member of that group has experienced in the years that have now passed. No one from that team has played 50 playoff games since getting to Game 7 against the Bruins.
Ryan Kesler leads the way with 49 post-season appearances with the Canucks and Anaheim, followed closely by Tanner Glass with 43 spread between Pittsburgh and the Rangers.
For perspective, 100 different players around the league and nine separate teams have played 50 or more playoff games in that span, led by Carl Hagelin with 111 and the New York Rangers with 93.
Kevin Bieksa (29), Alex Burrows (27, with 15 of those coming with Ottawa this spring), Jannik Hansen (21) and Max Lapierre (20) are the only other members of that 2011 squad that have suited up for twenty or more playoff games since 2011.
Players get close to the pinnacle of their sport, and believe they’ll have another shot somewhere along the line. Henrik Sedin is living proof, however, that it simply isn’t the case. The Canucks captain celebrated 15 playoff victories in the spring of 2011. He has appeared in just 15 playoff games since and brother Daniel, who missed the first three games of the Canucks 2012 playoff series with Los Angeles with a concussion, has played in just 12 post-season games since the run to the final.
The others in the lineup for Game 7 of the 2011 final all barely saw the playoffs again: Alex Edler has 15 post-season appearances with a chance to log more as his career continues.
But Chris Higgins and Raffi Torres have seemingly played their final NHL games and added just 15 playoff games to their resumes.
Chris Tanev and Roberto Luongo have suited up 11 times, Sami Salo dressed for seven more playoff games, Manny Malhotra got into an additional five post-season contests which is where Cory Schneider stands all these years later. And Andrew Alberts dressed for four more games after appearing in the 2011 series against Boston.
At least they all had another taste of the playoffs.
For Christian Ehrhoff, Jeff Tambellini and Victor Oreskovich, that was it as far as post-season play was concerned. They were on the cusp of hoisting hockey’s ultimate treasure and never played another NHL post-season game again.
In fact, Oreskovich only appeared in one NHL game after Game 7.
In all, the 18 skaters and two goalies dressed for the Canucks in the highest-stakes game of their NHL careers have logged a collective 304 playoff games since 2011. That’s it.
Twenty players averaging 15 playoff games apiece over the past six seasons.
Dellow was right. Man, was he right. When you get your shot at glory, you have to make the most of it, because as the members of the 2011 Vancouver Canucks can attest, it’s not easy to earn another chance.