The Curse Of The Vancouver Canucks And The Number 11

A long time ago, a very strange friend of mine tried to get me into numerology. It didn’t work at the time – until recently, I’d always considered myself a man of science, and the science around numerology had always seemed to me to have a bit of a shaky foundation.

But she gave me a book appropriately titled “Numerology”, and I’m not an asshole, so I accepted the gift, I put it on my bookshelf and I forgot about it. And while I still haven’t read it, I have glared at it on my shelf from time to time, and I brought it with me when I moved from Vancouver to Victoria. And I don’t know if I’m taking it in by unconscious suggestion every time I see the name of the book on the spine, or if I’m just going insane, but I have since started noticing numerical patterns everywhere.

So what exactly is numerology?

According to a thing I read online just now: it’s the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. Further to that, an ‘angel number’ is a repeating number sequence that is understood to be a direct message from the spiritual world.

For example, the angel number 5 is said to represent big changes, periods of self-discovery and renewed personal freedoms; the angel number 7 is connected to bigger picture thinking, introspection and the pursuit of deeper wisdom; the angel number 43 is an indication that the ascended masters and angels are surrounding you (I’m not making that up).

I asked my hippie friend Michele about angel numbers once. Specifically, I asked her to tell me how she chose her angel number, and she politely let me know that the number chose her. I asked her to let me know how she knew that, and she told me she just knew. After doing a bit more research, I’ve come to the indisputable hard-science realization that you don’t pick an angel number, you don’t manifest an angel number, you don’t go seeking it out, you don’t find it at the end of a perilous journey. You sit, you listen, and you wait, and it reveals itself if you’re paying enough attention. Finding your angel number is a product of your intuition – an innate understanding of a cosmic order that is beyond science and its pathetic attempts to untangle the secrets of the universe.

And I’ve done decades – decades – of very, very patiently sitting, listening and waiting with the Vancouver Canucks, and I’ve refined my hockey intuition, and the angel number that has revealed itself to me that represents the fortunes of the Vancouver Canucks is the number eleven.

What has also been revealed to me is that the Vancouver Canucks are absolutely cursed.

Doesn’t even need to be said, really. We all just know it – intuitively.

And even if we didn’t have our trusty intuition, there’s a mountain of evidence.

Are the refs out to get us? There was a major incident involving veteran referee Stephane Auger where he was caught penalizing the Canucks to serve a personal vendetta against fan favorite Alex Burrows on January 11, 2010. Ron MacLean of Hockey Night In Canada followed this incident up with a nationally televised primetime hit piece against Burrows.

Are the refs out to get us? In addition to the Auger incident, Colin Campbell, the NHL’s senior vice president and director of hockey operations, had a son, Gregory Campbell, playing in the 2011 Stanley Cup finals against the Canucks – a series that famously featured a suspiciously long suspension to Canucks defenseman Aaron Rome as well as a curiously low amount of penalties called against Boston, a team known for their violent tendencies, against a Canucks team who had the league’s best powerplay that season.

Does the National Hockey League actively prevent the Vancouver Canucks from succeeding?

That same playoff series featured the forced recusal of Kay Whitmore, the equipment inspection guy, followed by Boston goalie Tim Thomas using illegal goalie gear that likely changed the course of the series, helping Boston win the Stanley Cup, and ultimately winning playoff MVP for his cheating efforts.

Does the National Hockey League actively prevent the Vancouver Canucks from succeeding? After the Canucks signed their franchise goaltender Roberto Luongo to a 12 year contract, which the NHL approved, the league later created a brand new salary cap recapture rule, and retroactively penalized ONLY the Vancouver Canucks with it. Subsequent violations of the cap recapture rule by other teams were simply ignored or forgiven.

And the curse goes deeper than simple man-made chaos from the league’s corrupt administration. This goes all the way to the top:

• the Canucks are the only team in NHL history to make it to three Stanley Cup Finals and win zero of them;

• the Canucks are tied for the longest existing team to not win a Stanley Cup;

• the Canucks are the only team to never move up, ever, even a single fucking spot, in the league’s current draft lottery system;

• Vancouver is the only city in the world to have two hockey riots (you’ll catch up to us eventually, Montreal, I believe in you)

And we, Canucks fans, we see all this, we feel all this, we know all this, and yet, we persist. It’s fate. Canucks fans are born to suffer. We don’t even have to talk about it. We just know.

And nobody really knows how we all arrived at being Canucks fans. It makes no earthly sense to decide to do that. From the outside, it’s all suffering. Who would choose this life? The only explanation is that it’s inherited like an ancient family curse. We’ve done something in a past life to deserve this. A shiny new flavor of purgatory. We are Sisyphus, and trying not to care about this team is our rock. We’re grinding karma. We were put here for crimes in a past life, and as our souls are processed for the afterlife, we just have to sit, watch, and suffer.

Getting focused.

So what does the number eleven represent in a numerological sense?

The number eleven represents insight without rational thought.

The number eleven walks the edge between greatness and self-destruction.

The number eleven represents the most elevated expression of male and female energy.

According to world numerology dot com, the number eleven represents the ability to reach spiritual enlightenment, which can become a reality in the material world as represented by 22, and then lift others into enlightenment, as represented by the number 33.

Some say the downside of having so much potential is that you may find yourself in stressful situations as you climb the ladder to success.

This can really affect your ability to get things done, so 11s need to be sure to schedule in some downtime.

Whatever you take away from these bits of wisdom, one thing you need to remember is that people with the angel number of 11 typically go through a tremendous amount of trials and tribulations – and these are intended to help them reach enlightenment.

In numerology, the number 11 is strongly associated with the number 29. On a basic level, the numbers 2 and 9 add up to 11 (which is important in numerology), and 29 as an angel number – just like 11 – carries with it a heavy karma, suggesting the need to face significant life challenges.

More on #29 later. For now let’s get focused. Back to the hockey stuff.

Looking back, looking way back, the number 11 has been haunting the sport of hockey in the city of Vancouver before the Canucks were even a spark in Pat Quinn’s eye. Far longer than any current Canucks fan has likely been alive.

The ironically named Vancouver Millionaires (Mi11ionaires?) were founded in 1911, and managed to actually win a Stanley Cup in their long-tenured existence of ... eleven years.

But they won a Stanley Cup. That sounds like a good start to everything. Where did it go wrong?

That Vancouver Millionaires team was led by none other than Fred “Cyclone” Taylor. Hockey’s first superstar. When the Patrick brothers signed him to play in Vancouver in 1912, it was the first time (out of two times) that the world’s highest paid athlete was a hockey player, and the only time that the world’s highest paid athlete was based in Vancouver. He was one of the fastest skaters in the world, and a prolific scorer, winning five PCHA scoring titles. And, most famously, he was the star player on the Vancouver Millionaires team that won the Stanley Cup in 1915, which is still the only time the Stanley Cup has been awarded to the city of Vancouver. So far.

And his legacy in Vancouver sports continues to this day, as his family continues to operate four locations of Cyclone Taylor Source For Sports, a well-renowned sporting goods outlet, as well as Cyclone Taylor Figure Skating. (On a personal note, Cyclone Taylor’s son once drove my mom home with my birthday gift, a plastic street hockey net for the backyard of our duplex.)

So why do the hockey gods hate Vancouver, if this absolute legend is the forbearer of our hockey history?

I have a theory.

It could be that all of Vancouver’s championship luck was tied into the Vancouver Millionaires franchise and that it all disappeared into the ether when the PCHA folded in 1924.

But knowing the wrath of the hockey gods so acutely, having spent my entire life in the wake of their commands and decrees, I believe the far more likely scenario is that Cyclone Taylor personally had the entire fortune of the city in his hands, and that the gods took it away from all of us the moment that he became the primary catalyst of the city of Vancouver’s first ever embarrassing international incident – the Komagata Maru.

What was the Komagata Maru? It was the name of a Japanese steamship carrying 376 passengers – 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus – from the Punjab province of British India, all hoping to immigrate to Canada – departing April 4^th ,1914.

The Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver on May 23 at Coal Harbour in the Burrard Inlet, and the immigration officer who greeted it was none other than Vancouver Millionaires superstar Fred “Cyclone” Taylor, working as a civil servant during hockey’s offseason. Taylor did not allow the ship to disembark.

Eventually the ship was sent back to India and arrived near Calcutta on September 27, the British authorities in India attempted to arrest several of the men on board, which led to a riot, resulting in 20 of the passengers being killed.

(20, of course, being the angel number representing patience, balance and trust.)

Now you might be thinking, hey idiot, this happened in 1914. If this was the watershed moment for a century of curses and suffering, why did the hockey gods gift Vancouver a Stanley Cup in 1915?

I’ll tell you why – to heighten the Century of Suffering thereafter.

We win that Cup and we think nothing of the Komagata Maru, at least in terms of its intrinsic relationship to a multigenerational sports curse. We get complacent, collectively, as hockey fans. The hockey gods almost tease us to double down on our confidence. We make it all the way to the Finals three times, feeling like we’re getting closer every time. We start to feel good about things. We stay feeling good about things. And then it’s all taken away in tragic fashion, suitable for a Hollywood movie. They will build a center in us, they will chew it up and leave. They will work to elevate us, just enough to bring us down. What the hockey gods did was give us a taste of hockey perfection that is now so distant and intangible that it’s almost pathetic to even think about.

We were given one Stanley Cup back before anyone was even doing Stanley Cup parades. There are no remembrances. There is no joy reverberating in the city down the annals of time. There are no murals. There are no monuments. With the Denman Arena burning down in 1936, we now have no modern cultural connection to the event whatsoever. Even the reprisal of the Vancouver Millionaires jerseys by the Canucks was somewhat of a failure, with most jersey fanatics panning the ugly maroon color, and the Heritage Classic event, featuring those jerseys, against the Ottawa Senators 99 years later, generated the feud between Roberto Luongo and coach John Tortorella (Tortore11a?) that resulted in Luongo being traded to Florida, where he eventually won two Stanley Cups as a member of the coaching staff.

Getting focused.

Fast forward about 50 years.

The NHL had been seeing increases in gate revenue and popularity over the years due to stars like Howie Morenz, Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard, and with increasing demand for hockey in smaller markets due to televised games, and with the promise of a lucrative broadcasting deal on the horizon, the league decided that it could do with a round of expansion. While it was seen as highly ambitious at the time, the NHL decided that it would double in size from the Original Six, and that by 1967 the league would be comprised of 12 teams.

This was announced in 1965, on March 11.

Fast forward about a year.

In February of 1966, the NHL’s Board of Governors considered applications from 14 different ownership groups, including five from Los Angeles, two from Pittsburgh, and one from each of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, San Francisco-Oakland, Baltimore, Buffalo and Vancouver.

They fairly quickly decided on five of the six new expansion teams – Los Angeles, Oakland, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia – bringing the total to... eleven.

At this point, the teams remaining with active bids were Baltimore, Buffalo and Vancouver, so of course, the final expansion franchise was awarded to ... St. Louis?

Yeah, you’re reading that right. Instead of rightfully going to Vancouver, the final expansion franchise was granted to a city that didn’t submit a bid.

Total bullshit.

The move angered a lot of people. This was Canada’s sport, and zero of the six new expansion teams were Canadian. Vancouver was widely considered a lock. The exclusion of Vancouver was so egregious that it even drove the Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson to voice a complaint.

Obviously this raises the question - why would the NHL award an expansion franchise to a city that didn’t submit a bid, especially with a perfectly viable bid immediately available in Vancouver?

The answer is that two of the owners of existing NHL teams, Arthur Wirtz of the Chicago Blackhawks and James Norris of the Detroit Red Wings, co-owned an old arena in St. Louis, and promised the expansion franchise to the Solomon Family of St. Louis if they agreed to purchase the arena for $2 million, which was by that point so dilapidated that it required extensive renovations.

Mercifully (?), there was another, smaller round of expansion a couple years later, and soon after that much quicker process, as if to correct a grievous error, expansion franchises were awarded to Buffalo, who have their own unique brand of sports hell spanning multiple sports, and of course, Vancouver.

The successful Vancouver bid was led by a man named Tom Scallen, CEO of Medicor, a medical investment company based out of Minnesota, and who also owned the Ice Follies, and later the Ice Capades and Harlem Globetrotters.

But if you think the story of Tom Scallen (Sca11en?) has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.

He was convicted in 1973 of stealing $3 million from Northwest Sports Enterprises, the company that owned the Vancouver Canucks, using that money to pay off Medicor’s debts. He was also convicted of issuing a false prospectus in raising money to cover the $6 million expansion fee for the Canucks.

A controlling interest in the Vancouver Canucks was sold to Frank Griffiths, whose family maintained control of the Canucks until 1996.

For his crimes, Scallen would end up going to prison for nine months of a two-year sentence.

More on him later.

Rewind a few years now to the Vancouver Canucks’ first ever NHL entry draft.

A new franchise’s first ever draft pick is supremely important. New franchises typically get the top draft picks, and the top draft picks get the best players. This is where you get your franchise player. Your Alex Ovechkins and your Sidney Crosbys and your Connor McDavids.

And the 1970 entry draft was a huge one.

Gilbert Perreault, from Victoriaville, Quebec was turning heads as a junior player, scoring 51 goals and 122 points in his draft year, winning OHA MVP and leading his team, the Montreal Junior Canadiens, to their second straight Memorial Cup title.

He was seen as a generational talent, a can’t-miss superstar player, straight from the hockey factory of Quebec in its absolute prime.

Gilbert Perreault was going to be the #1 pick. There was no doubt.

And the pick was going to either the Vancouver Canucks or the Buffalo Sabres.

Now, back in the day, the method of draft lottery was more than a bit bush league. The determining system was a roulette wheel spin, with the numbers 2 to 12 – the Canucks would be allocated numbers 2 to 6, the Sabres would get 8 to 12, and the number 7 would be neutral, requiring a re-spin.

When league president Clarence Campbell spun the wheel, he initially thought the pointer had landed on the number 1, and began to congratulate the Vancouver delegation. However, Buffalo’s general manager Punch Imlach asked him to check again, and on closer inspection, you guessed it, the wheel had landed on the number 11.

The god damn Buffalo Sabres landed the generational talent Gilbert Perreault, and while he didn’t lead Buffalo to a Stanley Cup victory, he came just as advertised, and brought immense joy to the city of Buffalo for the next decade and a half.

And he did it wearing the #11.

Suppose it wasn’t all bad. Vancouver still ended up with the #2 overall pick, who would logically be the second best player available. Who did we end up with? Dale Tallon, who played a few pretty good years for us, was traded away, and later got into NHL management.

More on him later.

Okay, so the draft didn’t do anything to solve the curse. Maybe some actual hockey will help.

Fast forward a few months to puck drop.

October 9, 1970.

There’s some hope on the horizon, as noted tough guy Wayne Maki takes the ice wearing #11, and in his first season with the Canucks, manages to finish among the team’s leading scorers, with 63 points in 78 games, only three behind team leader and legendary alumnus Andre Boudrias.

But his production faltered in the next season, and Gilbert Perreault’s only accelerated. While Maki fell to fourth in team scoring, with only 47 points, Perreault, fresh off winning the Calder trophy as the league’s best rookie, kept breaking his own Buffalo franchise scoring records. Not that the two players were ever remotely comparable, but I just want to paint a picture of how things were going for us back in the early days.

The Sabres made the playoffs, again, and the Canucks missed the playoffs, again.

There’s always next season, right?

Unfortunately, a couple months through the next season, Maki, while on the Canucks active roster, was diagnosed with brain cancer, and died a year and a half later, aged only 29 – the sister number to eleven, as mentioned before. This was the first Vancouver Canucks player to die while being a Vancouver Canucks player.

After Maki’s death, the Canucks unofficially took Maki’s number eleven out of circulation, out of respect for the man and his family.

Fast forward about eleven years. And trust me, the hockey was so bad, and the winning so scarce, you’ll thank me for fast forwarding. (Gilbert Perreault scored about a thousand points in this period.)

The 1980s in the NHL can be best characterized as the decade of the Edmonton Oilers. The franchise was merged into the NHL from the failing World Hockey Association before the 1979-80 season, and showed up pre-loaded with Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player to ever lace them up.

As predicted, they got off to a great start, winning divisions and scoring titles right out the gate.

After a few years of playoff troubles, they finally dispatched the New York Islanders dynasty, and they went on to win every Stanley Cup for the rest of the decade, except for two.

Between Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier, they won every MVP trophy except for the one given to Mario Lemieux in 1988.

They set insurmountable team and individual scoring records that still stand to this day, decades later.

And they did a lot of this against the helpless and floundering Vancouver Canucks, who were trapped in the same division.

Wayne Gretzky famously notched a lot of his goal scoring milestones against the Canucks. His first goal, his 500^th goal, his 700^th goal, and his 802^nd goal – the one that made him the NHL’s all-time goal scoring leader, leaving Gordie Howe in his dust – were all against the Vancouver Canucks.

While most of the points were scored by that Wayne Gretzky guy, the Canucks were punished both on the scoreboard and very physically by the man who would become their captain after Wayne Gretzky was traded.

Mark Messier.

Wait, what’s that jersey number?

More on him later.

The Canucks were due for a stroke of their own luck, wouldn’t you say?

Enter general manager Pat Quinn at the 1989 NHL Entry Draft. The #1 overall pick in this draft was to be a Swedish forward named Mats Sundin, who would go on to become the franchise’s all time leading scorer... for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Unfortunately, the Canucks didn’t pick until 8^th overall, where they selected Jason Herter. If you don’t know who that is, that’s okay, he didn’t really do much of anything. You can forget about him.

Going back a couple years, just for a minute.

The Canucks had taken advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent exodus of Soviet hockey players, and had acquired the NHL rights of superstars Igor Larionov and Vladimir Krutov, who they were hoping would eventually make their way to the NHL – which they eventually did, to varying degrees of success. Of course, this meant that the Canucks would have an interest in sending a professional scout to Moscow in order to observe their new found hockey talents. While there, a smaller, younger forward caught his eye – a kid named Pavel Bure, who was about 16 years old. According to reports, the kid was not only keeping up with these older, grizzled veterans, but borderline dominating them.

Mike Penny, the scout that the Canucks had sent to Moscow, took note, did his due diligence, and kept watching Bure whenever he had the chance.

Fast forward to bring us back to the 1989 draft. At this point, everyone knows about Pavel Bure, and he’s considered the top prospect not yet in the NHL. The problem is that nobody believes he’s draft eligible. Everybody wants to draft him, but nobody thinks they’re allowed to. At the time, Russian prospects had to play a certain number of games internationally before they would be declared eligible to be selected by an NHL team in the draft. Bure was considered to be one game short of that requirement.

The Canucks use a sixth round draft pick to take him anyways.

Everyone’s angry.

But as it turns out, the aforementioned scout Mike Penny, doing his due diligence, was the solitary NHL scout in attendance at a Christmas Day game the year before, where the Soviet national team was playing in Finland, with Pavel Bure on the scoresheet.

Nobody else knew about that game.

The draft pick counted.

If you’ve read this far, you can probably guess the number of international games required to make a player draft eligible.

Yep – eleven.

It took a lot of trials and tribulations – like the angel number promised – but we finally found our franchise player.

Bure brought the city of Vancouver to its knees with his skill and his intensity. He was the best player in our franchise’s history, by far, and he was the most exciting player in the world, on any team. He was the player who got me into hockey.

He even lit the scoresheet in the game that my family was listening to, on the radio, driving in our 1989 Dodge Aries with the trunk secured by rope, the evening where my dad explained to me the concept of a game-winning goal, as we beat the Calgary Flames by a score of 11-0.

He secured his legend over the next few seasons, winning the Calder trophy for best rookie over Nicklas Lidstrom, setting a Canucks goal scoring record that still stands (60), as well as setting a Canucks point scoring record (110) that held for almost two decades.

The Pavel Bure era of the early 90s is best celebrated by focusing on the 1994 playoff season in which he scored one of the most celebrated goals in Canucks history, beating Mike Vernon in the second overtime of game 7 to knock out the Cup favorite Calgary Flames on his way to set Canucks playoff records for goals (16) and points (31) that still stand to this day.

That run was magical – embedded permanently in the memories of everyone who was alive to witness it – and led by Bure and Kirk McLean and Trevor Linden, the 1994 Canucks made it to game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

How did they do? They won, right?

Right?

Okay well, on the bright side, this Mark Messier guy was to become a free agent in 1997, and wouldn’t you know it, the Vancouver Canucks managed to sign him to a very lucrative 3 year contract.

Of course, he would have to choose a different jersey number than 11 – if you remember from earlier, the Canucks organization unofficially retired the number 11 in honor of Wayne Maki, who tragically died of cancer in the early 70s.

So what number did he end up choosing?

Okay well, at least the Canucks experienced a good amount of Mark Messier’s brand of success, making the playoffs and perennially challenging for the Stanley Cup?

Okay well, at least the vibes were good, and everyone had a good time?

Sorry, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.

On Messier’s arrival, there was an immediate leadership crisis with Trevor Linden – the incumbent Canucks captain, and likely the most popular and beloved Vancouver Canuck of all time, during which time Linden took the high road, offering Messier the captaincy, and for his selflessness, was rewarded with a trade to the New York Islanders by the general manager, and Messier’s personal friend, Mike Keenan.

Highly popular enforcer Gino Odjick, #29, was also sidelined and traded for the crime of falling on the wrong side of Messier’s favor.

The times were so bad that even superstar Pavel Bure was chased out of town.

But it all came to an end in the year 2000, when Mark Messier’s contract expired, 11 years after Pavel Bure was drafted.

It’ll all be good times now. We’ve done our trials and tribulations. We have an eleven angel number. This is enough trials, No more tribulations. It’s time for enlightenment.

We suddenly have the best team in hockey and we’re in the second round of the playoffs in 2003. We’re up against a Minnesota Wild team that isn’t even very good. This will be a cake walk.

Wrong again. Minnesota came back from down 3-1 in the series and defeated Vancouver in seven games, with the final goal of the series – the insurance goal, putting Minnesota up 4-2 - being scored by Pascal Dupuis.

Okay, on to the next season. We still have an elite team and we can still win in 2004.

The Canucks were playing against the Colorado Avalanche on Feb 16, 2004, a couple months before the playoffs would begin. Fourth-line plug Steve Moore delivers a late hit on Canucks superstar sniper Markus Naslund, resulting in Naslund getting a bone chip in his elbow. His wrist shot, the ultimate weapon in his offensive arsenal, would never be the same.

Everyone is angry.

Steve Moore was a junk player. He was not good enough at hockey to play in the NHL on his hockey merits, so he had to play with an edge and hurt opposing players to stay relevant. And he decided he would prove his worth by taking out the best sniper in the game.

Obviously, the Canucks wanted revenge. They’d just lost their best player to a dirty, late hit. Brad May was even candid enough to mention to the media that there would be a bounty on Moore’s head.

Vancouver and Colorado were to face off against each other two more times in the regular season. We all knew something was going to happen.

And all these tensions came to a head on March 8, 2004, a game with eleven total goals.

At first, in an effort to keep the act of revenge within the rulebooks, the tougher customers on the Canucks roster, such as Brad May and Todd Bertuzzi, had challenged Moore to a fight. Moore would have been dusted and the whole thing would have been done with. But Moore backed down from every challenge, save for Matt Cooke, the smallest player on the Canucks roster.

Halfway through the third period, Todd Bertuzzi, sick of Moore’s refusal to answer the bell, famously grabbed him from the back of his jersey and delivered a thunderous blindside punch to the back of his head.

The punch certainly would have resulted in CTE issues for Moore on its own, but the event was compounded by a handful of players jumping in to participate in the ruckus, which, in its present state, was a dogpile on top of Steve Moore.

The first additional player on the scene, adding 213 lbs of weight, crushing both players into the ice in a compromising position, almost certainly causing Moore’s plethora of fractured vertebrae, was Colorado forward Andrei Nikolishin.

Todd Bertuzzi (rightfully) ended up suspended indefinitely for the attack, the Canucks lost to Calgary in round 1 of the playoffs without him, and the contention window for the Naslund/Bertuzzi/Morrison/Jovanovski/Ohlund core faded pretty quickly.

When a contention window closes, you start a rebuild (usually), and you look to the draft for your next wave of star players.

At the 2005 NHL entry draft, the seeding of which was determined by lottery balls, it was decided that the Vancouver Canucks would pick 10^th.

Hey, curse broken, right?

Just as luck would have it, still available at 10^th overall was this mysterious Slovenian centre named Anze Kopitar. He was causing quite a stir as a prospect, and some draft boards had him as high as 6^th overall. So this guy available at 10^th is a steal, right? Obviously we’re going to pick him, right?

Nope!

The Canucks actually made a pretty decent selection here, with two-way defenseman Luc Bourdon. If you’re a Canucks fan, you already know how this story goes, but for anyone else reading this, Bourdon was killed by a tractor trailer, while driving a brand new motorcycle that he had purchased with his signing bonus.

Anze Kopitar was immediately selected by the Los Angeles Kings with the #11 pick.

More on him later.

The Canucks were now witnessing the emergence of the highly promising Sedin twins, Daniel and Henrik, but were having trouble finding a winger that suited their play and could complement their unique playing style at both ends of the ice.

Along came Anson Carter in 2006, who had previously worn #11 in Boston and Los Angeles, but had the kindness of heart and the presence of mind to wear the number 77 in Vancouver instead. And while it would have been pretty neat to see jersey numbers 11-22-33 right next to each other, I really think Carter made the right move.

They found a good amount of success together as a forward line – Carter scored 22 goals and added 33 assists. Unfortunately, Carter overestimated his own contributions to that success, and when it came time to negotiate his contract for the next season, Carter held out for an unreasonable amount of money, and the Canucks balked, fully understanding that it was the Sedins driving the success.

Carter ended up signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets where his production dropped off significantly, and was later traded to Carolina where it ceased almost entirely. He then retired from the NHL after that frustrating season where he only managed to score eleven goals.

Oh hey, remember Medicor? The scandal-ridden medical investment company that was owned by Tom Scallen, the man who brought professional hockey to Vancouver? In 2007 they filed for bankruptcy. That bankruptcy? You guessed it, chapter 11.

And maybe it was the spectre of Medicor that was keeping the fate of the Canucks tied to mediocrity, because thanks to the adept roster management of Dave Nonis and his successor Mike Gillis, the Canucks started to experience more and more success every season after Medicor’s bankruptcy was filed.

Newly acquired franchise goaltender Roberto Luongo was a runner-up for the Vezina trophy and the Hart trophy, being unfairly robbed of both. New head coach Alain Vigneault had won the Jack Adams for best head coach in the NHL. The Sedins emerged as superstars, each of them winning an MVP trophy and a league scoring title, with Henrik Sedin even eclipsing Pavel Bure for the Canucks franchise scoring record with 112 points.

But this is the era where we kept running into the Chicago Blackhawks – if you remember, this team was a bit of a dynasty, and they were put together by architect/general manager Dale Tallon, the very same man who the Vancouver Canucks selected second overall when the lottery wheel hit 11, which gave the Buffalo Sabres the option to draft Gilbert Perreault.

In 2009, the Blackhawks knocked the Canucks out of the playoffs in the second round.

In 2010, the Blackhawks knocked the Canucks out of the playoffs in the second round. They went on to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1961.

And of course, the next season, we faced the Blackhawks again. That year was, of course, 20...11.

We were up 3 games to 0 in the first round, the Blackhawks came back and made it 3-3. In the seventh game, we were up 1-0 in the dying minutes of the game, and the Blackhawks came back and made it 1-1. In overtime, Chicago had an incredible chance to send the Canucks to the golf course:

Against all typical Canucks fortunes, Luongo made an incredible save and the Canucks went on to win, when Alex Burrows, who was Anson Carter’s replacement on the Sedin line, scored a goal later in overtime, slaying the dragon.

Maybe this is why our angel number is 11 after all. It’s 2011 and we’re exorcising demons. It’s really starting to feel like this is our year.

We steamrolled the Nashville (Nashvi11e?) Predators in the second round.

We disposed of the San Jose Sharks in only five games in the third round, thanks to the luckiest bounce in playoff history – a puck deflected off a stanchion on the side boards, landing right on the stick of Kevin Bieksa, who shot the puck past a confused Antti Niemi while everyone on the ice other than Bieksa tried to figure out where it even was.

This is starting to feel like destiny.

Moving on to the Cup finals, the Canucks won the first game against the Bruins on a solitary goal with less than 20 seconds left in regulation, and then won game 2 (or 11, in Roman numerals) on a goal by Alex Burrows, exactly 11 seconds into overtime.

But if you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.

This was the fated year, the year foretold by the angel number, and it didn’t take. Heartbreaking would be an understatement. That evening was the high water mark of the entire history of the City of Vancouver and we watched in real time as it broke in our faces and we became the laughing stock of the world, shameful photos of our riots plastered on news cycles for days that felt like years afterwards. In a poetic sense we’re still living through the hangover.

Let’s move on. I don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t wanna talk about it.

The next season, 2012, the Canucks were the top regular season team in the NHL for a second straight year, but were knocked out in the first round by the Los Angeles Kings, who went on to win their franchise’s first ever Stanley Cup, led by superstar captain Anze Kopitar.

This is getting frustrating. Let’s look a bit further down the rabbit hole of the hard science of numerology and see if there’s any salvation in birthdays.

Taking a look at the master angel number of 11.

Mike Corrigan, born January 11, on the opening night roster, clearly representative of the hopelessness and endless futility of the early days of the franchise.

Dave Gagner, born December 11, was one of the players who came to Vancouver from Florida in exchange for Pavel Bure, emblematic of the crashout of the disastrous Mark Messier era.

Trevor Linden, born April 11, the golden boy, the face of the franchise, who couldn’t overcome the New York Rangers in 1994 and met the ire of Mark Messier in Vancouver.

Alex Burrows, also born April 11, the flame of hope that would eventually be extinguished on the ill-fated 2011 playoff run.

Fedor Fedorov, born June 11, brother of mega star and Hall of Famer Sergei Fedorov, and who came so, so far from living up to his brother’s legend that it’s considered more than a bit of a joke.

Kellan Lain, born August 11, who played only two seconds in his first NHL game, but managed fifteen penalty minutes for playing his part in an infamous John Tortorella-fueled line brawl, setting an NHL record that will probably last forever.

Conor Garland, born March 11, who was the best player coming back to Vancouver in what some consider the single worst trade in franchise history, when we traded a first round draft pick (used on budding star player Dylan Guenther, #11 for the Utah Mammoth) to take on the albatross contract of Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

Rory Fitzpatrick, born January 11, who was the darling of a grassroots fan campaign to be elected to the NHL all-star game, and who was en route to being selected in a landslide, but whose votes all mysteriously disappeared from the NHL ballots with zero explanation, once again proving that the league is out to fuck with the Vancouver Canucks.

Okay, 11 is possibly doomed. Maybe we can find some help in its sister number, 29.

Maxim Lapierre, born March 29, a key agitator in the failed 2011 finals.

Vincent Desharnais, born May 29, a physical defenseman brought in to replace Nikita Zadorov, but who faltered, and whose poor play helped the Canucks miss the postseason in 2025

Okay, the sister number isn’t being very helpful. What if we combine them?

Tanner Glass, born 11/29, emblematic of the middling, mediocre era immediately following the Sedin core and the 2011 contention window.

Brad May, born 11/29, the man who issued the fatwa on Steve Moore.

Pavol Demitra, born 11/29, tragically killed in the infamous Lokomotiv team plane crash in Russia.

I’m starting to lose hope in birthdays. Let’s go back to the timeline.

2014, the Kings win the Stanley Cup, again.

The next year, 2015, the final breath of success of the core built around the Sedin twins, collapses against the Calgary Flames and future captain Mikael Backlund.

For fuck’s sake.

The next five seasons produced zero success whatsoever, but we did manage to draft pretty well under our general manager Jim Benning, picking up Brock Boeser, Thatcher Demko, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, and in 2020, with a roster built around those players, we were on pace to make the playoffs – and we did, thanks to the remainder of the NHL season being cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, on March 11.

Due to the precarious nature of the playoff situation, the bottom of the playoff seeding was to be determined by a play-in, to make it fair for all the borderline teams. And the Canucks won their play-in against the Minnesota Wild, with a legendary series-winning goal, with nobody in the crowd due to COVID-era pandemic restrictions, 11 seconds into overtime.

I’m getting tired of this. So very tired. Maybe numerology isn’t the path to salvation I’ve been led to believe.

And really, maybe it would be worth examining whether this association with the number 11 has even been a blessing. Maybe ‘angel number’ is the wrong phrase for this kind of thing. Or maybe all this suffering IS the right path, and whatever fucked up god is doing this to us is certainly working in mysterious ways. But if our supposed path to salvation is indistinguishable from eternal suffering, we have to start asking questions. Whatever the case, maybe it’s time to explore a new discipline.

As a wise man once told me – when god gives you lemons, you find a new god.

And who am I to doubt the wisdom of David Lynch, Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov?

Maybe it’s time to look to the stars for inspiration. Maybe the path to bring the championship back to Vancouver is floating somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy. Maybe the rings of Saturn can inspire us towards the rings of the Stanley Cup. Maybe the glimmer of the north star is secretly a glimmer of hope. Maybe...

Oh COME ON