Quinn’s Questions: Would You Unretire a Jersey?

Dec 5, 2022 - 5:21 PM

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Quinn’s Questions is a feature where you the fans tell us your thoughts, through your vote and hopefully in the comments, as well. It’s named after Quinn Hughes, Pat Quinn, or both, depending on your age and era.

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Results of Previous Quinn’s Questions: Should Spencer Martin replace Thatcher Demko as the starting goalie?

No - 79%

Yes - 21%

I’m surprised that yes got a fifth of the vote. Impressive. I guess with Demko out we’ll have to hope he’s up for the job, and that the 21% of you are indeed correct.

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We’ve talked about the Luongo situation at length. He’s being inducted into the Ring of Honour. He probably should have had his jersey retired. Everyone’s really mad about it, and yes, I understand. I agree. He should have probably had his number raised to the rafters. Collateral to this discussion, of course, is the debate around the numbers currently retired.

For those who maybe don’t know, the numbers current retired are Stan Smyl’s #12, Trevor Linden's #16, Markus Naslund’s #19, Pavel Bure’s #10, Henrik Sedin’s #33, and Daniel Sedin’s #22. As people have argued for honouring Luongo — now a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame — some of these individual’s have been caught in the crossfire. So I ask you, if you could, would you unretire one of these numbers? And if so, who?

There are a couple cases to be made.

Stan Smyl is generally the first guy that comes to mind. He maxed out at 88 points, and was generally more of a heart and soul grinder type, and those are not usually the players that wind up in with their numbers retired by most organizations. Now, did he represent his particular era of Canucks hockey? Sure, but on raw merit, I think there’s reason to suggest he maybe shouldn’t be up there.

Markus Naslund (cool first name) is another guy that gets thrown around a lot, though I will admit, I don’t get this one as much. He was the franchise’s leading scorer for a time, he won a Ted Lindsay award, he was a genuine superstar on the NHL scale. I suppose the West Coast Express era did not really accomplish anything — unlike the 1982, 1994, and 2011 clubs — but still, I don't think Naslund is an egregious inclusion. Though, again, not really a HHOF guy, and not part of a team that won a whole lot, so I guess I understand the instinct.

Some people had way more edge takes. Maybe you have beef with Pavel Bure still and don’t think he deserves it based on the way things end. I suppose Trevor Linden suffers a bit from the Smyl thing of never being a true superstar, so maybe you oppose his inclusion. Some people are truly chaotic and think no Cup = no jerseys should be retired.

So let me know what you think. Would you take down Naslund, Smyl, or someone else? Or would you leave it as is? There’s a reasonable case that the status quo more or less represents the team’s history pretty well. Vote and comment away.

This column will be away next week for holiday reasons but we’ll be back with more Canucks debate the following week.