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VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks will be playing for nothing tonight in their NHL regular-season finale against the Calgary Flames, but that does not mean that the game is without intrigue.
The game could represent a final curtain call for three players who have come to symbolize Canucks hockey over the past two decades.
Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison, Trevor Linden. Respectively, the captain, the local hero, and the face of the franchise.
If there is any way this non-playoff season ends with some warm tidings, it will come if Naslund, a pending free agent, and Linden, who is contemplating retirement, give the General Motors Place faithful something to remember tonight. Neither Linden nor Naslund was prepared to discuss his future yesterday — not in detail, anyway — but all the signs were there.
In a strong hint that he will retire, Linden, who has spent 16 of his 19 NHL seasons in Vancouver, said he has made a decision but would not share it lest he overshadow the game.
"Every year for the last couple, I've been uncertain about what I may or may not do and so this is no different," the former captain said. "[The fans] have always been so good to me, shockingly so at times, so I wouldn't expect anything different."
Naslund said it would be different walking into the building he has called his workplace for the past 12 years, and agreed that the Canucks' core group of players would likely not be kept intact after an underachieving campaign.
"There's a possibility that a lot of guys might not play again for the Canucks," Naslund said. "Yeah, it's a little bit of an emotional time."
Morrison, another free-agent-to-be who is recovering from knee surgery, cannot play and said yesterday that he is saddened his eight-year Canucks career could come to an end without one last game.
"I was thinking about that today when I was walking in here," the native of Pitt Meadows, B.C., said. "It's a little disheartening."
Each of these three players will have their own chapters in Canucks annals. Linden was the franchise building block in the early 1990s before reuniting with the team in the twilight of his career and maintaining his legendary status with the partisans even while his ice time decreased. In an age of mercenary professional athletes who keep their distance from the rest of society, Linden made a point of becoming a full-fledged citizen of British Columbia, accessible to the fans, and more important, to good causes.
Naslund and Morrison formed two-thirds of what was, along with Todd Bertuzzi, one of the NHL's best lines earlier this decade, a unit that defined an era of riveting Canucks hockey.
If not for the lockout season of 2004-05, Naslund would have tied Stan Smyl as the longest serving captain in club history while Morrison became the NHL's reigning ironman as a Canuck, playing in 542 consecutive games before wrist surgery ended that streak in December.
"If you look at the big picture and not just what has happened here in the last two weeks, [Linden and Naslund] have meant a lot to this organization," Morrison said. "With Trevor coming in here as a young guy, at 18, and really growing up in the city, everybody feels like he is a part of them.
"Markus has done a lot for this organization too, and I don't think he gets enough credit at times."
And so, here it is: the captain and the face of the franchise, with the local hero watching from the sidelines. Expect some sentimentality, expect some nostalgia, and expect some emotion.
The playoffs may not be coming this spring, but for one night only, gripping theatre remains.
