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Team Canada will be full of former Canucks at the Olympics

In total, nine members of Team Canada are former Canucks.
Mason Raymond on the Canucks bench

Since the NHL won’t be sending their players to the Olympics, no current Canucks will be representing their country in Pyeongchang, Korea when the tournament kicks off on Valentine’s Day.

There will, however, be plenty of former Canucks on Team Canada.

On Thursday, Hockey Canada announced the 25 players that will be on the roster for the Olympics. Of those 25 players, six are former Canucks. As well, two members of the coaching staff and one of the management team once played or coached the Canucks.

Those six players are Mason Raymond, Max Lapierre, Derek Roy, Linden Vey, Andrew Ebbett and Marc-Andre Gragnani.

The most recent former Canuck is actually the coach, Willie Desjardins, who was fired just last year. Desjardins’ time in Vancouver started with such promise, as he implemented some innovative tactics, including a willingness to ice the puck in order to score an empty net goal, something that made sense statistically even if it rankled old-school thinking.

Unfortunately, Desjardins increasingly began to make baffling lineup decisions, particularly when it came to a power play that could not score but of which he didn’t want to change because it might wreck the “chemistry.”

When Desjardins was named head coach of Team Canada last summer, I argued that it was a great choice.

Desjardins has done well with AHL players in the past and, in Vancouver, seemed to frequently prefer them to the NHL players on his roster. In Pyeongchang, he’ll have some of the best AHL players in the world.

Desjardins is joined on the coaching staff by one former Canuck, Scott Walker, who was drafted by the Canucks in 1993 and played parts of four season in Vancouver. On the management side, Sean Burke is the General Manager of the team. He played all of 16 games for the Canucks, but if he’s a Canuck on a hockey card, that’s good enough for me.

The most notable name among the six players is Mason Raymond, who was drafted by the Canucks in the second round in 2005 and played six seasons in Vancouver, including their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2011. Raymond suffered a serious back injury in Game 6 against the Bruins when he was run into the boards by Johnny Boychuk in a vulnerable position.

Raymond was never quite the same after fracturing two vertebrae and damaging nerves and tissue in the hit, but has continued to play. After leaving the Canucks in 2013, he signed with the Leafs and put up 19 goals and 45 points, then had a two-season stint with the Flames, before finishing his NHL career with the Ducks. This season, he couldn’t find an NHL contract, so he signed in the Swiss league with Bern, where he has 25 points in 26 games.

One of his teammates with Bern is a former Canucks teammate, Andrew Ebbett. The 5’9” forward played parts of two seasons with the Canucks in 2011-12 and 2012-13, then played a couple seasons with the Penguins before signing with Bern three years ago. Ebbett is Bern’s leading scorer with 41 points in 37 games and could play a big role at the Olympics.

Maxim Lapierre played the longest with the Canucks after Raymond, joining him in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final after a trade with the Anaheim Ducks, then playing another two seasons in Vancouver. After two more seasons with the Penguins and Blues, Lapierre left for Sweden, playing for MODO in the SHL before landing in the Swiss league with Lugano.

Lapierre has 30 points in 38 games for Lugano this season and is sure to be an aggravating presence for Team Canada.

Linden Vey is a figure of mild controversy in Vancouver, not really because of anything he did, but because of how Willie Desjardins used him on the ice. Vey was given prime power play time despite never doing too much with it.

Vey lasted two seasons in Vancouver from 2014 to 2016, then signed with the Flames, playing most of the following season in the AHL. After that, he signed in the KHL, where he has dominated. His 52 points in 50 games is third in the KHL, right behind Ilya Kovalchuk, so perhaps Desjardins was right to use him the way he did, or perhaps the KHL is a pretty mediocre league.

Derek Roy and Marc-Andre Gragnani both barely played for the Canucks after trade deadline deals, but they count! Roy played a dozen regular season games in Vancouver in 2013, then four more in the playoffs. He bounced between the Blues, Predators, and Oilers in the two seasons that followed, and has since played in the KHL, Swiss league, and now SHL, where he has 25 points in 30 games with Linköping.

Gragnani lasted 14 games in Vancouver in 2012, then played a season in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, before heading to the KHL, then the Swiss league, then a brief return to North America with the New Jersey and Albany Devils, then made his way back to the KHL for the past two seasons. Gragnani is fourth in scoring among KHL defencemen with 29 points in 48 games. The player leading KHL defencemen in scoring? None other than Philip Larsen.

Let’s be honest: without NHL players at the Olympics, the men’s hockey tournament is unlikely to be very good. But having some familiar faces on Team Canada does pique my interest a little. I’m particularly rooting for Mason Raymond, who had a rough ride in Vancouver as he was never able to match his 25-goal, 53-point season in 2009-10.

If Elias Pettersson makes Team Sweden for the Olympics, the loyalty of Canucks fans might be a bit split.