After Troy Stecher’s excellent pre-season, fans were clamouring to see the 22-year-old stick with the Canucks out of camp. Instead, he got sent down to the Utica Comets, but it didn’t take long for Troy Stecher to earn his first call-up with the Canucks. With Chris Tanev injured, Stecher leapfrogged over Alex Biega and Nikita Tryamkin to skate on the top pairing with Alex Edler.
Some might worry that Stecher has been overhyped by Canucks fans. If anything, the opposite is true: he’s been underhyped. Suggesting that Stecher will be the best defenceman in Canucks history is underselling him: he will surely be the greatest athlete in Vancouver sports history, if not the history of the known universe.
Is this an overstatement? Crazy exaggeration? Dangerous and unrealistic hyperbole? Not at all. This is the least hyperbolic article in the history of written language.
Let’s just look at the facts. He had 109 points in the BCHL, which is a very high number. Jamie Benn had just 65 points in his BCHL career and he won the Art Ross a couple years ago. Stecher is 1.677 times better than Benn; it’s science.
And now he’s made his NHL debut and it is not a stretch to call it the greatest NHL debut of all time. Auston Matthews’ four-goal game? Rubbish in comparison. You have to go to the NBA and Wilt Chamberlain’s 43-point, 28-rebound first game to find anything even close to approaching what Stecher accomplished against the Ottawa Senators.
In a game where the Senators dominated the Canucks in the possession game, Stecher led the team in the most important statistic of all: corsi. We all know that corsi is the be-all and end-all of hockey statistics and all other statistics are useless numbers for dummies. Well, Stecher was plus-7 in corsi in his first ever NHL game.
Is it any coincidence that seven is considered to be the number of perfection? No. No it is not.
What, you want context to go with that incredible corsi? How about this: the players he faced the most in his debut were the Senators’ top pairing of Erik Karlsson and Marc Methot. Yes, that’s Erik “Two-Time Norris Trophy Winner” Karlsson. You may as well hand Stecher the 2017 Norris right now and then the Norris for every season for the next twenty years as well.
Stecher led the Canucks in shot attempts and was second only to Edler in ice-time, because he respects his elders. But it’s just a matter of time before Stecher is the number one defenceman on the Canucks, playing on every pairing, quarterbacking both power play units, and spending every penalty kill skating circles around the offensive zone. Over 20 minutes may seem impressive for a rookie in his first game, but Stecher will soon be playing 20-minute shifts. Three of them per game.
And get this: he doesn’t have photographic memory. Anybody can have photographic memory. Stecher has videographic memory. Ask him about any play and he won’t just remember it; he’ll break it down. He is his own video coach.
He’s also a proven winner, carrying the Penticton Vees to the RBC Cup in 2012, where he was named the top defenceman, because they didn’t have an award for greatest human being at that tournament. He could have single-handedly won the Frozen Four for North Dakota last year, but Stecher is not just the greatest athlete of all time, he’s also the most magnanimous, allowing Brock Boeser and Drake Caggiula to have their moment in the spotlight.
Stecher’s ability to win means that the Canucks’ goal of reaching the playoffs this season needs to be adjusted: Stecher is about to lead the Canucks to the Stanley Cup. Heck, even that is too small a goal for Stecher, whose destiny clearly lies in a battle against a genetically-enhanced alien race that has adopted the game of hockey as a way of life and method of settling all potential wars to prevent mutually-assured destruction. It will be up to Stecher to defeat these aliens alongside a team of cartoonishly incompetent buffoons (the Canucks might be available) to prevent the annihilation of the entire solar system.
There’s no denying it: unlike Gina Linetti, who is just a fictional character, Troy Stecher is the real ultimate human/genius.
Don’t tell Gina I called her a fictional character. She will viciously subtweet me.
