After game seven victories for Pittsburgh and Anaheim, the Conference Final matchups in the NHL playoffs have been finalized and there’s a former Canuck on all four teams left standing.
If you’re trying to figure out which team to cheer for, maybe your Canuck loyalties could play a role. Let’s break down the former Canucks on each team to help you decide.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Nick Bonino
It’s been a couple Bonino-less seasons in Vancouver and I’ll be frank: I miss the guy. Okay, back to being Daniel: I still miss him, at least in comparison to Brandon Sutter. The biggest benefit of the Bonino trade? Introducing an entire new fanbase to “Holding Out For Bonino.” Yes, that's selfish, but I'm allowed to be once in a while.
Bonino went from the Canucks straight to the Stanley Cup Final with the Pittsburgh Penguins last season, so he already has a Cup ring. Do you want him to win another? Or has the dominance of the Pittsburgh Penguins soured you, making you ready to see another team win the Cup?
Bonino has been mostly quiet this post-season, scoring just two goals and adding one assist, but one of those goals was a third-period gamewinner, so he’s still got some clutchitude left in him.
Ottawa Senators: Alex Burrows
If you’re a Canucks fan, how can you not pull for Alex Burrows to win the Stanley Cup?
An added bonus is that the Ottawa Senators are completely inoffensive. If Burrows was on the Leafs, Flames, or Oilers, there’s no way I could cheer for him to win. But since it’s the Senators, the NHL’s answer to the Utah Jazz, I can feel completely comfortable cheering for him to get a Cup ring.
The one upside to seeing a fan-favourite player like Burrows get traded away is that another fanbase gets to see what we liked so much about him. The reaction from Senators fans when the news broke that the Senators had acquired him was almost universally anger and even disgust. Actual sentence from that blog post: “Tell me what Burrows brings that someone like Mike Blunden or Phil Varone doesn’t.”
Burrows has quietly brought more than Blunden and Varone, playing in every situation for the Senators. After 11 points in 20 regular season games, he’s put up four points, all assists, in the playoffs so far. They’ve been crucial assists too: he had the primary assist on two overtime game winners against the Rangers, in Game 2 and Game 5.
Anaheim Ducks: Ryan Kesler and Kevin Bieksa
This is a bit of a conundrum: I would love to see Bieksa win the Stanley Cup, but for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, I really don’t want to see Kesler do the same. Also, the rest of the Ducks.
Kesler is coming off a superb series against the Oilers, where he mostly shut down Connor McDavid, while Kevin Bieksa has been reduced to a third-pairing role and has missed several games with a lower body injury.
Kesler has 7 points in 11 playoff games so far, making him the highest scoring former Canuck and is third on the Ducks in ice time on both the penalty kill and power play. If you’re looking for a former Canuck who’s playing the biggest role on his new team, the Ducks are your best bet.
But they’re still the Ducks. As nice as it might be to see Kesler and Burrows face off against each other in a Stanley Cup Final, I’d still rather watch the Ducks lose.
Nashville Predators: Yannick Weber
Weber got a bit of a rough ride in Vancouver. After putting up 11 goals and 21 points in 65 games in 2014-15, he managed just 7 points in 2015-16. He was better than he ever got credit for, but he wasn’t really good enough to play a regular top-four role. The most frustrating thing was how he didn’t get used on the top power play unit with the Sedins, despite some success with them the previous year.
Well, the Predators don’t use him on the power play either, but that’s because they have four other defencemen who are really good on the power play, like Ryan Ellis and P.K. Subban, so that’s pretty forgivable.
The Predators may have only acquired him because they still had a bunch of Shea Weber jerseys they needed to sell and changing the number from 6 to 7 was cheaper than removing all the nameplates, but Weber has settled into a third-pairing role, averaging under 12 minutes per game while the top-four does all the heavy lifting.
Weber certainly isn’t hurting Nashville, but he’s not exactly a big contributor, so if you’re looking for a former Canuck to cheer for, the Predators might not be your team. But they are a fun team to watch thanks to their team speed and great transition game from their mobile defence, so I’m cheering for them anyway.
That means I’m pulling for a Predators/Senators Stanley Cup Final. Because I'm a Canucks fan, that almost guarantees that the opposite will happen.
