The Vancouver Canucks European All-Star Team

All-Star lists are awesome.  They are so debatable, just justify your picks with a few choice facts, ignore the rest and let the insults start pouring in.  Especially if it's about someone else's favorite team.  The greatest thing about creating your own list is that it gives you the opportunity to say 'yeah? Well, where's your list smart-guy?' and then lean back in smug satisfaction for if nothing else, you had the ability and drive to actually write a list out that wasn't on a beer coaster.

For those who know Canuck fans, they probably will agree that most haven't even read this far; they just jumped to the selections and are preparing their own observations for the comments section which is fine, that's what it is there for.  For those of you who have read this far, congratulations - you will now find out why the Sedins aren't on the team; for the simple fact is that they are still playing.  So #1 rule of the list - all Canucks selected must be retired as of this writing.  Yes, the Sedins will be on a lot of greatest Canucks list in the future but let's not get ahead of ourselves, yes?

So, in no particular order here are my picks for the Vancouver Canuck All-Star European Team;

      Left Wing Markus Naslund 

Todd...todd...todd

 Markus, better known as 'the best 1 for 1 Canuck Trade in History', is the leading Canuck scorer as of right now.  A native of most likely Sweden, he is also probably a relative of the infamous yet really tiny Mats Naslund but maybe not; a lot of people are named Naslund in Sweden.  He also played with the Canucks for 12 years, which I did not know. This was because of Mark Messier. And I was high a lot. 

Thomas ignoring the striped airplane
behind him.

Center: Thomas Gradin
Perhaps the best player ever to play with Stan Smyl (sadly), he is one of the main reasons why Stan got in over 50 fights in his career (winning all of them).  Most of these fights were over Thomas's awful understanding of how to talk smack and that he probably also cheated at cards.  Gradin is also most likely from Sweden. He's definitely not from North America for as you can see, he's wearing a visor and this was in the mid-eighties.  








Right Wing Pavel Bure 

Two words; Shane Churla. And Hall of Famer.  So six words.

Defencemen; Jiri Bubla and Jyrki Lumme.

Most of the reason why this is such an awesome pairing is their names.  Imagine trying to take these guys seriously when looking at a line up card. Although pronounced 'Yuree' and 'Yurkee', Saying their names invokes a picture of a couple of characters that should be in MarioWorld or selling sketchy nude dvds out of a 1980's van until i found out that they are probably in with the Mob.  Well, Jiri definitely.   

Jyrki Lumme was a prime reason that the Canucks made the Cup in '94.  He was the smarterst and quickest defenceman of the day for the Canucks, although in all fairness, he was playing with guys named Murzyn, Babych, and Dirk, none of them ever having being accused of speeding to a library.  Plus, Jyrki led the revolution in athletes wearing glasses during interviews, which made him look like Jeremy Roenick's younger, more intelligent brother. 



From Left to Right; Jiri Bubla, unknown, Jyrki Lumme's pappy.

Jiri Bubla was an ex-communist bloc tank of a man that also happened to be part of an international FRIGGIN' drug cartel, being arrested in 1986 for smuggling heroin, one year after being banned from playing hockey due to not returning to Czechoslovakia once the Canucks season was over.  Being that this was 1985, that would have been sometime mid-november. If he chose not to decapitate you, it was just because he was probably laying low.





Arturs, undressed after a game. 

Goaltender Arturs Irbe - otherwise known as the Mr. Pillows (perhaps just by me, because he looked like a bunch of pillow cases stuffed in the crease for the other team's amusement), Arturs only played one season during the Messier era, playing in 41 games, being the winning goaltender in 14 of those games.  His 2.73 GAA wasn't impressive, but quite a bit more than Messier's PPG with the Canucks which was .78 (see, stats can be your friend).  So if Messier was on a breakaway against Arturs Irbe, chances are that Irbe would stuff him every time, because as a Canuck Messier couldn't score on a pile of pillows on the best of days. 

Plus, Irbe has been not only the winning-est Canucks European goaltender in team history but also the only one, other than Johan Hedberg who is more famous as still being Martin Brodeur's back up, not for having played in all of 21 Canuck games.