In the midst of doing the SKA Report, I came across a bit of news that the number retirement ceremony for Pavel Bure by the Vancouver Canucks is tonight as they take on the Toronto Maple Leafs. This is coming a day after both Henrik and Daniel Sedin signed 4-year extensions, which will take them through the 2017-18 season. As for Bure, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame last year, the number 10 will be raised to the rafter, where it will reside with numbers 12 (Stan Smyl), 16 (Trevor Linden), and 19 (Markus Naslund). Bure was the Canucks' first superstar player, scoring 254 goals with the team in seven seasons. An acrimonious fallout prior to the 1998-99 season saw him get traded to the Florida Panthers and while he finished his career with the New York Rangers, his best years were in Vancouver, where he scored 60 goals and notched over 100 points in two of his seven seasons with the team. As controversial as he was in his later years with the team, no player (prior to 1999) made the Canucks fans jump to their feet like Bure, whose speed was a major catalyst for many of his goals. The number retirement ceremony is the best sign that the hard feelings between the Canucks organization and Bure is now in the past, and now, no player will wear the number 10 in Vancouver again.
No comments:
Post a Comment