Sunday’s game between the Minnesota Wild and Vancouver Canucks brings Quinn Hughes back to Vancouver for the first time since the former captain was traded to Minnesota, and that kind of homecoming is already loaded.
If you need a roadmap for the reaction, Ottawa and Detroit already offered one with Brady Tkachuk and Dylan Larkin: boos, sarcasm, and the occasional cutting sign. Vancouver has seen this movie before, too. About 25 years ago, the city greeted another controversial captain’s return in much the same way.
That night belonged to Mark Messier.
On November 17, 2000, Messier came back to Vancouver with the New York Rangers, and the baggage around that visit was very different from Hughes’ situation. Hughes had been a franchise centerpiece before things fell apart. Messier arrived as a lightning rod almost from the start, with plenty of Canucks fans already against him because of his history with the Edmonton Oilers and especially the Rangers.
The captaincy change poured gasoline on everything. Trevor Linden was stripped of the “C” so Messier could wear it, something he later more-or-less insisted on, and then Messier took jersey number 11, which had been unofficially retired in honour of Wayne Maki, a former Canuck lost far too early to brain cancer.
From there, the bad blood only deepened. The Canucks hired Mike Keenan, Messier’s former coach in New York, and the relationship between the two became far closer than any captain should have with his bench boss. Messier and Keenan would appear to somewhat conspire to run some popular Canucks out of town, including Linden and Gino Odjick.
The hockey was no prettier. Messier never came close to living up to the contract, and Vancouver missed the playoffs in all three of his seasons there. He put up 60 points or fewer each year after producing 84 in his final season with the Rangers.
By June 2000, the Canucks had bought out the final two years of Messier’s deal for about $2 million. Even that didn’t end the mess.
Messier then sought another $6 million from the club over a deferred payment clause, and that dispute had already started by the time he returned in November. It would drag on for a decade before an arbitrator ruled in Messier’s favour in 2012.
There are obvious differences between that situation and Hughes’ return. Hughes’ play doesn’t really carry the same questions, apart from a perceived lack of effort late in the run.
And Vancouver was able to trade him instead of simply cutting him loose, which brought back a significant return. Still, the common thread is hard to miss: a captain making it clear he’d rather be somewhere else, and that never sits lightly with a fan base like this one.
Messier’s return on November 17, 2000 played out exactly how you’d expect. He spoke warmly about his time in Vancouver beforehand, just as Hughes did before Sunday, and it didn’t change a thing.
He was booed hard every time he touched the puck, and the noise only grew louder as the night went on, especially after he picked up a late assist. The crowd also came armed with signs, many of them taking aim at his potato chip sponsorship deal: “Messier is a Lays-Z Boy,” “Bet You Can’t Win Just One,” and the more direct “Corporate Sellout.” One banner summed up the mood with “Younger, Faster, Better… No More Mess, Eh?”
The on-ice result made the whole night even more memorable for Canucks fans. Vancouver won 4-3, with Markus Naslund, Todd Bertuzzi, Daniel Sedin and Matt Cooke all scoring. Naslund would eventually inherit the captaincy from Messier, Bertuzzi would later become the kind of power forward the club had hoped for, and Daniel Sedin scored what was the seventh goal of his young career during a hot start that often gets overlooked.
That win was bigger than just a single result. It felt like a turning point, a clean break from the Messier era and a sign that a new generation had arrived. The Canucks would make the playoffs that season after four years out, and the path from there ran through the West Coast Express years and eventually the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals run.
So when Hughes steps back into Vancouver on Sunday, the boos and the signs are basically guaranteed. But if the Canucks can answer with the kind of win they got the last time a disliked former captain came home - ideally one that snaps a nine-game losing streak and comes with help from the next wave of talent - that would matter far more than the noise in the building.
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